This little thing we've got
by fiction-goddes
Summary: Carson/Rodney slash story. Generally romance and hurt/comfort. Parts of SGA episodes combined with the feelings of Carson and Rodney as they live their lives together. Other than that, some in-between shots of what you don't see on TV ;
1. Unsaid Feelings

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Stargate Atlantis, God I wish I did... although... the series would probably evolve into a slash series if I did own them...

Anyway, I just borrow the characters from time to time to let them have a good time.

Warning: this is a slash story and although it might not contain actual sex or anything, it is still about two men having the hots for each other and they do rather have fantasies so... if you are against this, don't read, I beg of you.

Characters: Carson Beckett and Rodney McKay

Summary: Well... mainly just the two of them as they try to understand their feelings.

Writers note: Moonlight and Witchbones have already read the first two chapters of this story (seeing as I've already uploaded those as separate stories before, so if you want, you can start with chapter 3 ;)

--

Unsaid feelings.

The days pass and Rodney can tell that he's being avoided. He can't blame the man for wanting to stay away from him. He did get kissed against his will, but he had hoped that they would be cool after it.

He and Carson had kissed, yes, that much is true, but still, it doesn't have to be this way, it was actually Cadman who kissed him, it wasn't even him! Yet Carson seems to think otherwise, every time the two of them pass each other in the hallway, Carson quickly looks the other way and pretends that he is not there.

The once so great friendship has collapsed and it is all Cadman's fault.

He sits in his chair, watching Carson as he comes walking through the gate, he had just come back from P43-856, he had been sent there because it was said that the people there had some really nice medicine that Carson might be able to use. Judging from the look on his face and the guilty sound in Dr. Weir's voice, it seems as if he didn't find what he was looking for.

"Doesn't he look amazing when he's trying to take control of the situation?" he suddenly hears.

"Oh yes, he does..." Rodney replies without even thinking, he frowns his eyebrows and looks around, seeing Cadman standing next to him. "What are you doing here?" he asks, trying to keep his face clear of emotions.

Cadman puts up a dirty smile. "You can't pretend, Rodney, I know all about your feelings for him. You try to hide it for the others, but I can honestly say that I now understand what a boner feels like." she whispers, putting her face as close to Rodney's as possible. Rodney swallows hard. "I have no idea what you're talking about." he says, sounding like a cornered kitten.

"Just to make it clear to you, Carson belongs to me, he loves me, so you don't stand a chance." she stands up, giving Rodney one last filthy look before walking down the stairs and greeting Carson.

Rodney watches her as she goes. "If you don't think I stand a chance, why are you trying to threaten me, woman?" he hisses beneath his breath.

"Sorry, were you saying something?" Zelenka asks, he just appeared out of nowhere to stand beside Rodney.

"No, no, nothing." Rodney murmurs. He looks down to Carson, how he stands there, talking and laughing with Cadman.

--

Carson stepped through the gate, his visit to the planet had been a total failure. He had arrived in the village, asked for the medicine that he came to investigate, only to find out that the villager's mouths were bigger than the truths behind them.

There was no medicine, no cure for anything and he felt disappointed. He turned around and left the planet without even asking further, there had been too many drawbacks without having to deal with this one as well.

Dr. Weir walks up to him. "How did it go, Carson?" she asks, her happy face quickly dropping as she notices that Carson doesn't look all too pleased.

"Don' even ask, it was a total failure, they didn' even have the slightest idea of medicine, let alone that they would have something I don't already have." he explains.

Dr. Weir looks at the man, feeling slightly guilty for sending him over there in the first place. "I'm sorry Carson, I really thought the Intel was correct, else I wouldn't have sent you over there in the first place." she says as an excuse.

Carson shakes his head. "It's alright, really. I know ye wouldn't have." he says, smiling a little.

He looks up and sees Cadman walking down the stairs, there is some kind of determined look on her face and Carson decides to smile and wave at her. He doesn't really feel like talking to her right now. Ever since she had shared Rodney's mind and body, she had been acting as if she loved him. Of course, she did kiss him, even though it was through Rodney, so she must have some sort of feelings for him, but he is unsure whether or not the feelings are mutual.

"I see that things didn't really go as planned?" Cadman asks as she has caught up with him.

Carson shakes his head and repeats the story again.

Cadman listens and then says: "Well, maybe it's for the best, we know that you are the smartest doctor around, we can't have someone outsmarting you, doc."

This makes Carson laugh a bit and he looks up to the control room. There is Rodney, sitting on a chair near a computer, but for a change, he isn't even touching it, he's just staring down at them, and something tells him that he's not really pleased either, although Carson can't really find out why.

It's probably just the fact that he's talking to Cadman, the one person Rodney really dislikes. In the one, single encounter they had in the last couple of days, Rodney had made it quite clear to him that he doesn't think Cadman is a good match for him, that she would make him feel miserable.

Carson smiles a little at this. Yes, that might be true, and so far, the only reason why he is dating her, is because she was the one that let him feel Rodney's lips. And he liked that feeling... a lot...

Cadman pulls his shoulder and he looks around, she looks angry for some reason. "Come on, we're leaving." she says, a little more forceful than intended, probably, as she quickly smiles and kisses him on the cheek.

Carson nods and follows her, quickly looking back over his shoulder to see Rodney sighing and walking away.

He follows her into her quarters, where Cadman locks the door behind them, making Carson feel highly uncomfortable.

What is she thinking? Certainly she doesn't want the two of them to go to the 'next level' yet, so to speak?

He turns to face her and there is that determined glare again, those eyes that show some fierce emotion which Carson can't identify, but he's unsure whether or not he likes it.

"What's the matter, Carson, you look a little spooked." Cadman asks, quickly analysing the situation in a correct manner.

Carson shakes his head and takes a step backwards as Cadman approaches him. "It's nothing... I was just wondering... why did ye lock the door?" he decides to ask, swallowing back some words that are better left unsaid like 'I don't really feel like engaging ye in any way.' or something like that.

Cadman looks at the door. "I don't want to be disturbed." she simply replies, quickly crossing the left space between them and throwing herself into Carson's arms.

Carson closes his eyes and tries to think of a way out of there, away from her. After a moment he realizes he can't find anything and he hugs back, what else can he do, walking away would probably hurt her feelings.

"You feel so tense..." Cadman whispers in his ear and she pushes him backwards, onto the bed.

'Aye, I feel tense alright, but not for the reasons you think, lass.' Carson thinks as he feels the soft mattress underneath him.

Cadman turns Carson around with a slight glint of military force and he finds himself face down on the bed, immediately stripped from his shirt. He hears Cadman's softly spoken words, "Calm down, I promise I won't hurt you." and he sighs, not physically perhaps, he thinks.

Cadman sits on top of him like a horse rider, one leg on each side and starts to massage his back, trying to get the tension away from him.

Carson feels that she has done this before, her hands are quite capable and he feels himself relax under her touch.

'I wonder if Rodney would be as able...' the thought suddenly pops up in his mind, along with some rather arousing images, he turns around, almost surprised to see Cadman there instead of Rodney and he pushes her away.

Cadman lets out a yelp of surprise and looks a bit hurt. "Carson?" she asks, her voice soft.

Carson looks around the room, trying to make up an excuse for his sudden behaviour. "I'm sorry, love..." he says, adding the last word in order to spare her feelings a little. "I really appreciate all this but... I don' think I'm quite ready for this yet..." it's not a complete lie, he'll continue to try and go to the next level with her, she's someone that likes him and the object of his desire is way out of his reach. In any case, she's a safe bet.

Cadman nods. "I understand... it's alright, Carson." she says, smiling a little, although Carson can tell that she feels sad.

"I'm sorry, really." he repeats.

Cadman continues to smile and she gives him a quick kiss on the mouth before standing up and unlocking the door again.

--

"You look a little absent-minded today." Katie states as she watches Rodney stare out of the window.

Rodney turns around with a questioning look on his face. "I'm sorry, did you say something?" he asks, feeling bad about himself because he didn't pay attention to her.

Katie frowns a little and repeats her sentence. Rodney stares at the table. "Yeah, sorry about that... Haven't been sleeping all that well recently." he decides to say. It's not a complete lie, every time he falls asleep, Carson is there in his dreams and then he forces himself to wake up again before things become too steamy.

Katie walks over to him, putting her hand on the side of the man's face and staring sweetly into his eyes. "How come, Rodney?" she asks.

Rodney doesn't really know how to answer that question. "Well you know... the Wraith and all... you can deny it all you want, but in the end, they frighten everyone on this base and... well... I keep having nightmares..." this is a complete lie, for the last couple of nights, he hadn't seen the Wraith in his dreams even once.

Katie looks extremely compassionate and she kisses Rodney's forehead. "Maybe you should go and see Dr. Beckett, he could give you something to sleep better." she suggests, suddenly feeling a slight burst of warmth flowing through her hand. "You're burning up, you should really go to the infirmary." she says in a firm voice.

Rodney shakes his head, quickly removing Katie's hand from his cheek. 'Damned emotions...' he thinks, burning up just because he heard Carson's name. "I'm fine, really." he says, not daring to look her in the eye.

Katie doesn't buy it and she pulls Rodney along towards the infirmary. "Katie, I'm telling ya, I don't need to go there."

They enter the sacred Beckett ground and Rodney's eyes immediately cross those of the Scot.

"Rodney, what's the matter?" Carson asks as he watches the reluctant man being pulled into the room.

Rodney shakes his head. "There's nothing wrong, I swear, but Katie wouldn't believe it." he exclaims.

"He's been having nightmares, so he hasn't slept for quite a few nights and I think he's running a slight fever." Katie explains the situation to Dr. Beckett, not capable of misinterpreting the situation even more.

Carson nods. "I could give ye some medications so ye can sleep better." he says to Rodney and Rodney quickly nods.

"Sure, that's fine." he says in a hastened way. Anything to get away from here at this particular moment.

The door to the infirmary opens again and Dr. Weir enters the room. "Ah, there you are. I need your help." she says, looking at Rodney.

"Sure, anything, tell me." he says, sounding way too desperate. "I mean... what's going on?" he tries to avoid the stares that the previous words triggered.

"Sheppard's team is heading out, I want you to go with them... and also, Carson, the village they're visiting got culled by the Wraith, I want you to accompany them in case there are any survivors." Dr. Weir explains.

Rodney looks at him, this day can not get any worse. He can tell that Carson feels somewhat uncomfortable about this as well, but he nods and starts packing his stuff.

Rodney walks out of the infirmary, leaving Katie behind, but not really caring about it. This will be the first time that Carson and he will work on the same mission since the disastrous event.

He gets geared up, silently, for the first time in his life and although his team looks at him in a really strange way, he doesn't really care. As soon as Carson enters the room to get ready, he leaves, looking over his shoulder once to see Carson changing into his off-world outfit, he shakes his head and quickly resumes his way before his mind starts thinking of things that would let him make a fool of himself.

--

As they cross the distance from the gate to the village, Carson is careful to keep a safe distance from Rodney, his latest actions have made it quite clear to him that the Canadian doesn't really feel the urge to come near him.

It makes him feel a little sad, in some way he had hoped that this mission would allow them to talk to each other again, but now he thinks about it, it might not really be a good idea in the first place, his mind is already quite screwed up as it is, talking to the man would probably make it worse in any way. He watches him as he walks there, Ancient device in his hands, concentrating on it more than needed, making it quite clear that he doesn't want anyone near him at this time. He smiles a little, Rodney is so bad with feelings, just as he is right now, he would love to go and talk to his friend, but he wouldn't have a clue what to say, he is quite positive that Rodney feels the same.

Suddenly, as he takes another step, he doesn't feel ground underneath his feet, he yelps and falls, everything around him becomes dark and he hits the ground, hard and rocky.

Above him, people are shouting, but he is in pain and can't respond.

--

Rodney keeps concentrating on the Ancient device, checking for any sign of life around him, but finding only his own team, four in the front and one a little way behind them.

Carson... he thinks, he keeps monitoring the one life sign as if his own life depends on it.

He thinks back to the time before they left Atlantis, Carson had finally entered the gate room where Sheppard somewhat scolded him for taking so long, he felt bad for the Scot and he looked at him, Carson had looked back, smiling at him. Rodney can clearly recall the feelings he felt at that time, the warm flutter of butterflies in his stomach and a shiver across his back.

He shakes off the thoughts and hoists his backpack back on his shoulder, even though it was still perfectly in place.

A sudden yelp startles him out of his thoughts and he turns around, seeing Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla, but no Carson, he runs back to the place where the man should've been and notices a hole in the ground. "Carson!" he shouts, running over to it and losing his footing, falling and sliding right into the hole as well.

With an uncomfortable thud, he hits the ground. "Splendid..." he murmurs, rubbing his somewhat bruised arm. He looks around and sees Carson, struggling to sit up straight. "Are you alright?" he asks him.

Carson nods. "Aye, just a bit soar." he admits.

They both look up. The sunlight is quite a way above them.

Sheppard's face appears above them. "You two alright?" he asks, sounding quite worried.

Rodney and Carson quickly reassure the leader that they're alright.

"Alright, I'll try to get you out of there." Sheppard says, leadership clear in his voice, but as he turns around, the ground begins to collapse and a whole lot of soil and grass falls down into the cave. Carson and Rodney hear Sheppard retreating to prevent further damage.

_"It seems like the ground is too unstable, I'll need to figure out a different way to get you two out of there."_

This time, Sheppard's voice sounds over the radio.

"Alright, just make sure you do get us out of here, without burying us alive, please." Rodney says, sarcasm clear in his voice as he shakes the soil off of him.

_"Yeah, don't worry about that, I was quite aware of it already."_ Sheppard replies. _"Ronon and Teyla are going to resume their way towards the village, I'm going back to Atlantis to get myself a Puddle Jumper and then I'll return to I can scoop you up."_

"Sounds like a plan. See you guys soon then." Rodney replies and he sits back down again, looking at Carson who sighs and stares up.

Everything around them grows silent, Ronon, Teyla and Sheppard have left and they are now alone.

"Well then..." Rodney says, not sure what to say. "This is different eh?"

Carson chuckles a little. "Not so much..." he replies.

Rodney shrug's his shoulders, in some way he has to agree with the man, if he had a nickel for every time he got locked up or trapped, he'd be terribly rich by now.

_"Rodney, Carson?" _they suddenly hear, it's Teyla over the radio.

"What is it, Teyla?" Rodney replies.

_"There is a heavy storm coming our way, I believe you might be trapped there a little longer." _Teyla replies.

Carson and Rodney look at each other, fear visible on their faces. "Alright... we'll be alright." Carson says, not really believing it himself.

Neither of them had ever seen such a quick change in weather, one moment, the sun was shining, the next moment, clouds filled their already limited vision and rain started pouring down at them.

"This day just can't get any better..." Rodney murmurs, wiping the rain from his face.

"Oh, I think it can only get worse now..." Carson replies, looking at the ground that is starting to get muddy. "I think this place will start to flood some time soon."

Rodney looks down as well, seeing why the man came to that conclusion, he looks up again. "But that's a good thing, right? Once we're floating, we can swim towards the exit and get ourselves out of here." he says, sounding hopeful.

Carson nods. "Lets hope so." he agrees.

The water within the cave keeps rising and Carson and Rodney are already floating, kicking their feet to keep themselves above the water. "So... why were you avoiding me all that time eh?" Rodney decides to ask, now is as good a time as never, Carson can't run anywhere.

Carson looks at him, thinking that he has lost his mind, there are far better things to talk about at this moment. "Ye were avoiding me as well, ye know?" he replies, knowing it's a bad excuse. "I... ye... kissed me!" he starts coughing as a whole load of water floods into his mouth.

Rodney blushes. "I am quite aware of that... though it wasn't me." he says in defence, somehow he wished it was him, but this is not the time to tell that, not while they're both trapped and can't leave.

Carson doesn't reply to that, looking up again. "We're almost there." he simply says, reaching out his hand, hoping he can reach the exit.

"Carson?" Rodney asks, his voice sounding urgent. Carson looks around, the cave seems to be swirling around him.

"What's going on here?" he wonders, feeling something pulling his legs.

Rodney gets sucked under for a moment and when he resurfaces, he's coughing and catching his breath. "I think... one of the walls have given in..." he manages to say and sure enough, the wall on the left side is starting to crumble even further, drawing the two men into a completely different hole. The water level drops and they are able to stand again.

"Brilliant, we were so close..." Rodney whispers, walking back over to the other side of the cave, but before he's reached it, the wall collapses even further, making any passage impossible for them.

"Now we're really trapped..." Carson says, sounding downright terrified this time.

Rodney nods, looking around to face the Scot. "Sheppard will find us... he'll keep looking if we're not in the other cave." he says, more as a reassurance to himself than to Carson.

Carson nods, not feeling comforted at all. By the time that Sheppard reaches them, they'd be dead, long gone.

water keeps floating into the sealed cave, even though their passage seems completely sealed, Carson and Rodney can only reach the bottom if they stand on their toes.

"Rodney?" Carson feels the need to talk, to say anything at all, Rodney turns around to face the man, panic clear in his eyes. "Yes, Carson?" he asks, completely out of breath.

Carson looks at him, feeling a great sadness inside of him. "I am so sorry..." he says, his voice sounding emotional.

"Why?" Rodney asks, not understanding why the man suddenly started apologizing.

"Ye'r trapped here because of me... If I had been more careful, if I hadn't been staring at ye..." Carson turns bright red and wishes he could bite his tongue off. Rodney stares back at him. "Why would you be staring at me?" he asks, knowing this is hardly the time to get his hopes up, but he can't help it.

Carson shakes his head. "Forget I even said it." he whispers, but Rodney shakes his head and swims over to Carson. "Tell me... we're going to die here anyway, it doesn't matter, right?" he nearly shouts the words, wanting an answer, some answer, hoping for the right one, even though it's uncertain he'll get it.

Carson looks at Rodney, seeing his eyes so alive, fierce with desperation, but for some reason, they look different from a moment ago, there's hope in them, a certain need. He shakes his head, he might be reading the signs all wrong, but like Rodney said, they're going to die anyway, so it doesn't matter anymore. "I was looking at ye because I wanted ye to stop ignoring me, I was dreaming of ye kissing me again... holding and touching me." he says, making sure there is no way to misinterpret the words.

Rodney feels light-headed all of a sudden and it is not because of the lack of oxygen, he feels warm, despite the freezing cold water and he starts laughing, closing the last few inches between them to take the man into his arms. "Finally..." he says.

Carson yelps in surprise, feeling Rodney's body against his own. "Yes..." he replies, wrapping his arms around Rodney as well. "Finally..."

"I love you, Carson." Rodney whispers as his head bumps against the top of the cave.

"Carson feels tears in his eyes and he doesn't try to hide them, water is already touching his lips and he needs to get the words out. "I love you too, Rodney."

They hide in each other's arms as the already collapsed wall breaks down once more, flooding the entire cave with water, flushing the two men into the wall behind them, no way to escape.

They open their eyes to look at each other, filthy water between them, trying to break them apart, but they won't let go.

Their lungs are burning, every part of their bodies hurt and then, everything becomes black, quiet.

A day has passed, Rodney and Carson are in Atlantis' infirmary, Sheppard had dragged both of them out of the cave after he had finally gotten rid of the wall between him and the two doctors. When he had reached them, they were both unconscious, on the verge of dying, but they survived and were very much awake again.

"Well, in any case, I'm glad I got you out of there in time." Sheppard says, looking at the two of them, they've still got some cuts and bruises from the rocks they had hit, but otherwise, they're fine. "I need to go talk to Elizabeth now, mission reports, you know..." he says, saying goodbye to the two and leaving the infirmary.

Rodney and Carson look at each other, smiling a little. Dr. Cole comes walking up to them, to see how they are doing.

"Ye can go get some rest, doctor, we'll be fine." Carson says in a reassuring way.

Dr. Cole shakes her head. "No, I can't leave." she says.

Carson sits up straight for a minute. "Of course ye can, I'm a doctor too, remember? If something happens, I can solve it, and if not, I'll just radio ye." he says with a faint smile on his face.

Dr. Cole smiles a little as well. "Alright, as long as you can promise me that." she replies.

Carson nods and promises he'll contact her if anything goes wrong. After that, Dr. Cole leaves the infirmary so that the two men are alone.

Carson gets out of bed and sits down next to Rodney. "Well, we're still alive... want to take back those words?" he asks, grinning a little. Rodney looks up at him. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." he says, trying to keep a blanc expression, but failing miserably.

"Maybe I can make ye remember?" Carson says with a mischievous grin on his face, his face closes in on Rodney and they softly kiss each other, quickly growing more passionate as they feel the immense need. "God, why did we have to hide it for each other for so long?" Rodney whispers, his voice hoarse.

"Maybe because you know it's wrong?" the new voice couldn't have sound more unwelcome and they both look around, seeing Cadman standing just inside the infirmary. She's carrying flowers, but she throws them away into a corner and runs up to the two men. "How dare you? I told you to stay away from him Rodney!" she shouts towards the Canadian. "And you! I thought you were dating me! I can't believe you're doing this to me!" she cries out towards Carson.

Carson and Rodney couldn't have looked more embarrassed "I'm really sorry, Laura, listen..." Carson tries to say something, but is interrupted by Cadman. "Oh, so now I'm just Laura? Whatever happened to 'love' eh?"

Carson finds it difficult to see which emotion in Cadman is stronger at this point, anger or sadness and he feels really guilty.

"You know what? You're both going to be very sorry about this!" she shouts, running out of the infirmary without listening to the men who try to call her back.

"That went smoothly." Rodney murmurs, sighing and dropping his head back on the pillow.

Cadman rushes over the base towards the control room, where a lot of people have assembled.

"What's the matter, Laura?" Dr. Weir asks, she was just on her way to the briefing room with John as she saw the marine running up to the control room.

"Rodney and Carson, that's the matter." Cadman replies. "They are dating!"

Some of the people in the control room look at each other with a strange look on their face, but most of them seem to be unaffected by the news.

"So what? Zat is old news already." Zelenka says. "It waz clear on zeir faces for some time already zat zey liked each ozzer."

John and Dr. Weir nod.

"You knew about this?" Cadman asks, feeling very betrayed.

Dr. Weir nods. "I understand it's quite a shock for you, but the two have been behaving quite strange towards each other for some time now... ever since... well, you kissed Beckett through Rodney." she tells her.

Cadman gives her a furious look. "So now it's all my fault eh?" she shouts, turning around and running away.

Dr. Weir and John look at each other and smile a little. "I think she was pretty much the only one who was oblivious to the whole situation... along with Katie Brown of course..." John says with a lopsided grin.

"Oh no, even I was rather much aware of it already." The kind voice of Katie rings up to them as she walks the stairs. "I just had the silent hope I would be able to keep him with me. But I'm fine with this, really." she says with a smile.

Carson and Rodney are released from the infirmary the next day and the first thing Rodney does is dragging Carson with him towards the mess hall to get something to eat. "I'm starving, honestly." he says as an excuse.

Carson smiles, Rodney is always hungry, but this time, he can't disagree, his stomach is growling as well.

When they enter the mess hall, Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla wave them over. They quickly pick up something to eat and join the group at the table.

"It's good to see you two up and running again." Sheppard says.

Ronon nods. "For a moment there, I thought we lost you." he says silently.

Carson grins. For a moment there, so did we." he jokes.

"Quite obviously, else you would never have lost your minds like that." Sheppard says, staring at the ceiling.

Carson and Rodney stare at each other, feeling a little uncomfortable. "It seems like Cadman has been talking to you..." Rodney murmurs, feeling a little angry.

"She didn't have to... the way I found you in that cave spoke for you..." Sheppard replies, grinning widely this time.

Carson blushes furiously.

"And the whole base knows it as well, so there's no need to keep up pretence, you know." Teyla says, grinning as well.

Rodney looks around, seeing people staring at them, although that might also just be his imagination because of his embarrassment at that time.

"Don't start kissing in front of me though." Ronon adds to that. "And the best of luck to the new born couple."

Rodney and Carson look at each other, it seems that their team is a lot more open minded than they would ever have thought possible. They both nod and laugh broadly.

They finish their meal and leave the mess hall again, holding hands this time, seeing as they've got nothing to hide anymore.

"I don't even want to know where they are going..."

"Or rather, what they are going to do..."

The words of Sheppard and Ronon are the last words to reach their ears and they stare at each other with a wicked look in their eyes. It had not really crossed their minds yet, but thinking about it, they might just go and do just that...

the end.


	2. Malfunction

Several weeks have passed since Rodney and Carson were locked up in the cave together and Carson is quite happy to notice that everything is going more than great between them.

Things have been a little awkward, of course, but so far, none of the others have been really hostile towards them. The one exception being Laura Cadman who continues to ignore the two as they are together.

Carson smiles about it a little. Everyone had agreed to it, even Katie Brown didn't have all that much trouble with it, but Cadman, she was a real pain in the ass, so to speak.

He decides not to think of it anymore, he'd been feeling guilty for quite a few days and he has told himself not to let it bother him anymore, it would pass eventually. These ongoing hostilities have led to the fact that Rodney and himself haven't done anything else than kissing just yet, as the thoughts of Cadman and Katie keep bursting into their minds, either making them feel guilty, or making it impossible to become aroused.

Carson thinks that something will have to change in that matter, so he decides tonight is the night, he would try everything he possibly can in order to make sweet love to Rodney.

He stares at the gate, Rodney should be walking through it any minute now, if they're not overdue. Rodney had promised that they would go on a date as soon as he returns and Carson is patiently waiting for the man.

As if on cue, the gate activates and team Sheppard's IDC is received. Carson stands up and makes his way towards the gate as the team steps through it. Carson waits a little while away, waiting for Rodney to notice him and when he does, his irritated face turns a lot more happy. He walks up to his boyfriend, hugging him a little.

"Wha' happened to yer hand?" Carson asks as he notices a cutting wound on it.

Rodney looks at it and says: "Oh that, well, I was trying to fix an Ancient Drone device and one of the control cristals was broken... I cut my hand open." he says. Ever since he and Carson got together, he is a lot more easygoing on injuries.

Carson looks at it and nods. "Well, it's not really all tha' bad, but ye'r gonna need stitches." he says. Rodney nods back and willingly follows the Scottish doctor to the infirmary.

Carson quickly patches up Rodney's wound and puts a bandage around it. "I'm sure ye know the drill by now, yer supposed to keep it dry for three days." he says and he walks away.

Rodney nods and follows him into his office. "So ehm... does the date still stand for this evening?" he asks.

Carson nods. "Of course, love, there's nothing I'd rather be doing." he says, but then he turns around and closes the door to his office.

"What are you doing?" Rodney asks, but the next moment he finds himself liplocked with the doctor and all thoughts are abandoned. His whole body feels as if it's on fire as Carson's hands roam across his back and arms, bodies pressed against each other, taking in as much feeling as possible.

"Carson..." Rodney huffs out, wondering if this is really such a goot plan.

"Shh, Rodney, don't talk, if possible, don't even think." Carson replies, unzipping Rodney's clothes to touch the skin beneath it.

Rodney merely nods, the thinking part will prove difficult, as his mind is made for nothing else, but for a change, he can try to be silent.

Carson kisses his chest, savoring the taste of it, loving every part of it. Rodney is not really the most well-toned man, but he sure isn't ugly either, although the man himself might think so, having a lack of self-confidence and all. This is going to be it, their first time, he is sure of it. He looks up to receive the most brilliant sight he has ever witnessed: Rodney, standing there with his eyes closed, enjoying his touch, wanting more of it. Carson stands up and kisses him again, pressing his body against the Canedian once more, already feeling some evidence of arousal in the man's pants. He feels his own crotch reacting to the other.

He unbuttons the man's pants and pulls it down to pool at Rodney's feet, then he slides his hand down his underwear, taking hold of the man's cock and softly squeezing it, delighted to hear Rodney's soft moan.

"Oh please, can't you guys get a room or something?"

Both men quickly look around, Rodney pulling his pants back on. Cadman stands in the office, staring at them with disgust in her eyes.

"Cadman, what are you doing here?" Rodney asks, more than a little annoyed that the woman showed up at this moment. Cadman points at her ankle. "I think I sprained it, so I thought I'd go to the infirmary to have it checked." she simply explains, still giving the men a filthy look.

Carson sighs and walks out of his office, telling Cadman to sit down as he examines her ankle. "It's sprained alright." he says, getting some bandages and wrapping them around Cadman's ankle. "Well, you should take it easy for some time, no running or sporting." he says and Cadman stands up, ready to leave the infirmary as the door suddenly closes.

"What now?" she asks.

Carson and Rodney run up to the door, trying to open it. "Seems like the power's off." Rodney concludes.

"Brilliant, so now I am stuck here with two gay men who can't keep their hands off each other." Cadman curses beneath her breath and kicks a table with her wrong foot, cursing out loud as she feels the pain.

"Yeah, well, stop whining and it'll be a lot quicker for me to open these damned doors." Rodney snaps, shooting an angry glare in Cadman's direction. He can't stand the woman right now, not that he ever could, but the past few weeks had made his dislike towards her even greater, not to mention, she just disturbed them during a really nice and intimate moment.

"You can't tell me what to do, McKay, I am so totally allowed to 'whine' right now, I am locked up with the two men I do not really wish to see for a very long time." Cadman retorts, putting her hands on her hips and staring intently at Rodney.

Rodney turns towards Cadman, putting his hands on his hips as well. "Maybe, just maybe, if you hadn't been stupid enough to sprain your ankle, you wouldn't HAVE to be here, and then I wouldn't have been here, wasting my time on bickering with you." he hisses, narrowing his eyes for a moment and then smiling in a really unpleasant way. "Hhm... come to think of it, I would've been doing way nicer things like, oh say... making love to your sweet ex-boyfriend?"

Cadman is taken aback a little because of that, looking really hurt and Carson, who didn't fail to notice that, steps in between the two fighting people. "Alright, tha's enough, Rodney, maybe ye should get back to opening the door so we can get out of here." he says, the he turns towards Cadman. "And you, I advise ye stay silent and stop trying to get Rodney's focus away from that door, else ye'r gonna be stuck here for quite some time." he says, surprised about the tone in his own voice, it sounds almost cold.

Cadman squints her eyes at the Scot for a moment and turns around. "Whatever happened to the sweet doctor I used to know?" she asks, her voice sounding sad.

"He chose to regain his common sense and dump you." Rodney's voice is so much of a sneer that Carson feels the hairs on his arms rising. He turns around and shouts: "Rodney, stop that now and get to work!"

"Yes, doctor." comes Rodney's sarcastic reply, but he does as he is told and turns back towards the control panel beside the door.

After like five minutes of working in silence, Rodney turns around, a look of terror on his face as his eyes cross the back of Cadman's head. "I can't open the door..." he says in a defeated way and immediately, Cadman turns around, grabbing the front of Rodney's clothes, pushing him against the wall with great military strength. "You are going to try harder, else your life in here will become really unpleasant and shorter than your origional lifespan." she threatens.

Rodney feels anger boiling up inside him and with all the strength he can muster, he pushes Cadman away from him. She staggers and crashes into one of the beds, but instead of minding the pain, she jumps right back onto her feet and makes her way towards Rodney once more.

"Stop that!" Carson cuts through it as Cadman tries to hit Rodney in the face and Rodney is evidentally ready to kick her in the stomach as soon as she's within reach.

Cadman turns towards Carson, a mad gleam in her eyes. "Don't you tell me what to do, Carson." she says in a low and threatening voice. "This man stole you away from me and I am not going to let that go unpunished."

Carson makes up his mind and stands in front of Rodney, spreading his arms as far as he can, protecting him.

"Why on earth would you fall for this man?" Cadman asks, shooting a filthy look at Rodney, who remains hidden behind Carson. "He is selfish, arrogant, a good for nothing man who doesn't even look good, how on earth... how could you ever fall for him?"

Carson sighs, he should really be more careful on who he dates. "That is for me to know and for you never to find out. I know him better than you do, that should be enough." he says, sounding calmer than he is feeling right now.

Cadman smirks. "I shared his mind and body for a while, remember, I think I know him pretty well." she replies, trying to sound the same, but failing.

"Then you of all people should know that there is a lot more to him than just arrogance and selfishness." Carson replies, shrugging his shoulders.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to add selfpity, self loathing and bad social skills." Cadman sums up. "But I thought that the previous characteristics would be enough to make you start thinking about your choice."

Carson shakes his head. "Not a chance. You're jealous and hurt, I can tell, but that's not going to change the fact that I'm happy where I am." he says, his voice sounding quite warm.

"I am NOT jealous, but I am hurt, mostly in my pride, Carson!" Cadman shouts. "You chose that... that... thing over me!" she points at Rodney, who responds with 'Hey!' and tries to break free. Carson tries to stop him, but at the same time, Cadman advances as well and although Carson tries to stop the two from fighting, he failed to notice that Cadman's focus wasn't on Rodney, and he gets hit squarly in the face.

After seeing this, Rodney becomes angered once more, pulling Cadman away from Carson and throwing her into a closet with an almost animalistic growl. After that, he closes the door and draws one of the medicine stands in front of it so that Cadman won't be freeing herself.

"Let me out! I set let me out, damn it!" Cadman shouts, punching and kicking the door with all her might.

"Like hell, yes." Rodney says softly as he runs over to Carson who is whiping some blood off his lip.

"Wha' have ye done?" Carson asks him, looking at the closet, he tries to sound like he cares, but his grin gives him away.

Rodney cocks an eyebrow. "What? This way we won't be bothered by her anymore." he says, loud enough for Cadman to hear it.

Cadman yells and screams even harder now, but Carson and Rodney don't pay any attention to it anymore and breath a sigh of relief.

They sit down against the wall, next to the door.

"Well then, any chance the doors will open any time soon?" Carson asks the scientist.

Rodney nods. "Oh yes, I built in a failsafe a little while back, it'll take a few hours, but the system will reboot and it'll become fully operational again." he explains, sounding quite pleased with himself.

"So all we have to do is wait?" Carson asks, staring at the door, wondering if it is restarting it's systems right now.

Rodney nods once more, smiling a little. "So... any idea what we should be doing in the meantime?"

"I've got a pretty good idea..." Carson says with a slight grin on his face and without warning he pins the scientist against the wall and starts kissing him. "Would that do?" he asks when he draws back.

Rodney nods. "Although I think Cadman would go crazy if we'd be having sex here in this room." he says, eyes towards the closet.

This makes Carson laugh. "I think yer right, but there are other things besides sex." he suggests, although that was the actual thing he wanted to do today, he thinks that now is not the right time.

Rodney nods and grins and this time, Carson is taken by surprise as Rodney suddenly wraps his arms around him and kisses him with all the passion he can possibly offer.

Carson moans a bit, feeling a flock of butterflies taking residence in his stomach, he kisses back, needing the touch of this man so much that he can hardly stop himself from taking off his clothes and taking him right here and now.

It seems that Rodney is having the same kind of problem as his hands disappear under the Scottish doctor's shirt and start playing with the man's nipples.

Carson feels shivers running down his spine, going south towards his crotch, building up an almost unbearable desire to jerk himself off. "Rodney..." he whispers, surprised by how hoarse his voice sounds. Rodney looks at him and Carson shakes his head. "I'm not sure if I can control myself if you start teasing me like that..."

"You guys! If you start messing around with each other, I will never, ever forgive you!" the voice of Cadman sounds muffled within the closet, but it is enough to bring the two men back to the here and now.

"Oh shut up, you little whiner!" Rodney yells back, but he quickly retreats his hands from under Carson's shirt.

They look at each other and start laughing. "That woman is more trouble than she's worth." Rodney murmurs.

"Aye, quite true, lad." Carson replies, sitting beside Rodney and putting his head on the man's shoulder.

Rodney puts his own head on top of Carson's smelling his hair and suddenly wondering what kind of shampoo the man uses. He frowns, why would that be the first thought on his mind? He wonders. Maybe because he needs all his willpower to keep his thoughts away from anything else right now, because 'anything else' would probably lead to thinking about Carson, naked, horny, getting fucked.

Time goes by and Rodney and Carson just sit there, enjoying each other's pressence, until a sudden frightened and rather weak voice from the closet startles them. They had almost forgotten about Cadman.

"Guys... can you please... please get me out of here?" she asks.

Rodney looks up. "And just why would we do that?" he asks back, but his attention was drawn.

"I can't breath..." she whispers, just loud enough for the two men to hear, they look at each other and stand up, hurrying towards the closet, sure, Cadman can be quite a pain, but she doesn't deserve to die.

They pull the medicine stand away and open the door, Cadman jumps outside and falls to her knees, breathing in fresh air.

"Ye should really be paying more attention to where ye lock people up, Rodney. Choking someone to death isn't very nice." Carson says, he meant it as a joke, but he is quick to lift Cadman off the floor and putting her down on one of the beds.

"Yeah, sorry about that..." Rodney says, walking towards the bed as well. "Are you alright, Cadman?" he asks her.

Cadman looks up at him. "I am now..." she simply says, no anger, no sarcasm, merely a statement.

Carson and Rodney breath a sigh of relief.

"We're sorry for locking ye up there, lass..." Carson says softly, he feels guilty now that he knows that the bickering and the longing to be alone with Rodney had almost resulted in killing a person, his ex-girlfriend even.

Cadman shakes his head and sits up straight. "I've been quite a bitch as well." she says, not daring to stare at the men.

"You can say that again." Rodney murmurs, but one warning look from Carson is enough to shut him up.

Cadman looks at him as well. "I'm sorry for trying to interfere, Carson was right about one thing... I do know more about you than I let on... I know why you are trying to act all self-centered and all..." she says softly, tears forming in her eyes, but she wills them away. Rodney looks at her as if he's sure that she's lost her mind.

"You're not a bad person, McKay, but you do need someone to stop you from going too far some times, and I know pretty well that Carson is that kind of person." Cadman tries to smile, but can't quite gather the strength to do so, and she closes her eyes.

Rodney and Carson look at each other. "Seems like that closet has made ye think eh?" Carson jokes.

Cadman nods, but doesn't reply.

A whizzing sound from the far end of the corner draws their attention and they all look around.

"Oh finally!" Cadman says, sounding very much relieved. she stands up and walks over to the door. Then she changes her mind and walks back. "Carson..." she says, sounding slightly emotional. "Good luck with him." she nods at Rodney and quickly kisses Carson on his mouth for one last time, after that she leaves the infirmary.

Carson and Rodney stare at each other for a moment, smiling a little. Seems like things sometimes can be solved in an unorthodox manner, but they both agree to the fact that this is something that shouldn't be repeated.

"Say love..." Carson starts, but Rodney is one step ahead of him, grabbing the Scot's hand and dragging him into his bedroom where they get to know each other even better.

Liking every bit of it.

the end.


	3. Trinity

Defeated, Rodney sits in the briefing room back on Atlantis, all the senior staff members of the expedition are there, including Colonel Caldwell of the Deadalus. He had just caused a man's death, a man under his control. He had no idea what had happened, but he does know that he should've stopped it from happening and he is pretty sure that the other members of the expedition gathered in the briefing room think the same thing.

He looks up from his place at the table; Carson is talking, explaining what he's going to put in his report to the ones left behind.

"Officially my report will indicate Dr Collins died in a radiation explosion causing severe burns to well over 90 of his body." he says, handing over his report to Dr. Weir and sitting down again.

Dr. Weir looks at Carson in worry. "But there's more than that?" she asks.

"Aye, much more..." Carson replies.

Rodney stares at the table, of course there is much more, they are in a different galaxy and the man died from radiation emitted by an alien device. He already felt guilty enough without having to hear all this.

Carson continues his story: "To be honest I have no idea what sort of radiation it was..." he continued to talk after that, but Rodney could not make out the words anymore, for the first time in several years, he was feeling on the verge of crying, sure, people around him had died before, but never like this and never under his command.

Dr. Weir's next question gets Rodney's attention back: "What went wrong?" she asks and Zelenka answers.

"We're still analyzing data from ze test. All we know for zertain was zat zere was a massive power surge which in turn caused the containment field to expand a-symmetrically in the direction of the command access stoop... as to why..." he never gets a chance to finish his story as Caldwell cuts across his sentence. "How about human error?" he asks.

Rodney, who had been looking down at the table, looks up again. 'He can't be serious...' he thinks, Caldwell can't seriously be saying this. "Excuse me?" he demands.

"According to the reports, Dr Collins made an adjustment to the containment field, isn't it possible that he triggered the surge himself?" Caldwell continues, relentless, not even minding anyone's feelings at that time.

Rodney looks at Dr. Weir, who in turn, looks at Caldwell. He shakes his head and looks over to Carson, Carson stares at the table, either thinking or trying to stop himself for interrupting the colonel and standing up for his lover.

Dr. Weir's next words surprise Rodney a little. "Are you looking for a scapegoat, colonel?" she asks, there's a small tone of blame in her voice.

Caldwell is fast to reply. "Not at all, doctor, I'm admittedly looking for a rational that would allow doctor McKay to continue his very important work, is there something wrong with that?" questions to either side, more questions that answers, Rodney is quite growing tired of it, but for the moment, he can't do anything else than sit and listen. However, his voice is once more quicker than his understanding about when to keep quiet. "No." he says. "Collins knew the systems just as well as any of us. He wouldn't have made that kind of mistake. Everything was going well, and everyone did their job." Rodney stops talking, knowing that he's only making things more difficult for himself, but he just needs to tell them all that Collins did not make a mistake.

"Then what?" Dr. Weir asks him.

Rodney shakes his head once more, he can feel everyone's eyes turned towards him and it makes him feel highly uncomfortable, even more so because he has to admit that his brilliance is failing him at this point. "I don't know..." he says, sound of defeat clear in his voice."In terms of physics, this shouldn't have happened." He realizes how stupid this sounds and is glad that Zeleka is there to take over from him for a moment.

"We're still analyzing ze data from ze accident; it's going to take time..." Zelenka never got to finish the sentence.

"What I do know is that the device did what it was supposed to do." Rodney cuts across him, trying to regain some of his pride.

Sheppard is the next person to speak and Rodney can see Carson, who is sitting aside from Sheppard, fidgeting with his hands, trying to remain calm. "No Rodney, it didn't." Sheppard simply says, but Rodney is quick to reply, as always.

"Well... apart from the obvious containment issues." he can't help but smiling at this point, not so much because he thinks the situation is funny, but just because it's his way of dealing with this sort of thing.

Sheppard, however, isn't planning to let him off so easily. "It overloaded and you couldn't stop it." always the finger of blame pointed towards the trapped, brilliant scientist, Rodney nearly starts to feel sorry for himself, but his pride forces him to answer.

"Well, we won't know for sure until we go back down there and try again."

"Try again, are you serious?" Sheppard asks, disbelief clear in his voice.

Rodney can hardly believe his ears. "Yes..." is the only thing he can think of saying.

This time, both Sheppard and Dr. Weir are hardly believing their ears.

"A member of your team is in the morgue." Sheppard reminds him.

"And I am responsible for his death, yes, I am -painfully- aware of that. I sent him in there and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life." there's a little crack in Rodney's voice as he says those words and he is pretty sure that his emotions can be read off of his face right now, but he doesn't care about that. He can tell that Sheppard does understand what he is trying to say, so he continues. "Now we have the responsibility to understand what happened and learn from it."

The conversation didn't last long after that and when Rodney left the briefing room, he was even more devastated then he was when he got there.

He walks back to his room, practically in zombie mode and falls down on his bed. Maybe Dr. Weir was right, maybe it was indeed not such a good idea to continue the project, he burries his head under his pillow and tries to clear his head.

He is startled out of his attempts when the sound that is supposed to be some sort of doorbell rings through his room.

He stands up and opens the door. There is Carson, with his everlasting worried frown in his forehead and Rodney is more than happy to see him. Without saying a word, Carson takes the beat scientist into his arms and holds him tight.

Rodney has never been more grateful for a possibility to stay silent.

Carson pulls him along to the bed, sits down on it and pulls Rodney to sit on top of him so that he can hold him.

"She said no... she said I couldn't go back to the Ancient outpost." Rodney finally manages to say after several minutes.

Carson continues to stroke his hair, as he had done for the last couple of minutes.

"Aye, so she did, love." he simply says.

"I can't let this happen, I need to go back there, and I need to solve the problem, see what went wrong so that I can understand Collins' death." Rodney says, his voice a sad high-pitched whisper.

Carson nods, understanding it fully well. "I know love, but I'm not sure whether it's such a good decision to go back." he says quietly, hoping this won't cause Rodney to throw a fit at him.

Rodney remains relatively calm under this, it is as if his last energy got drained during the briefing. "I think it is... not only is are we supposed to understand this problem for Collins, this piece of technology might well be a brilliant solution to many of the problems here on Atlantis as well as anywhere else in the universe. Think about it, a device that can render Wraith Hive ships unable to attack, and a device that can actually destroy them in a single blow. Don't you think that it's worth investigating?" he asks, hope sounding through in his voice.

"I think it's indeed a rather good opportunity and if ye seriously think that ye can get that thing to work, ye should go talk to Colonel Sheppard, he's a lot more forthcoming in a one on one conversation than in a group meeting." Carson suggests. "But before ye do so, I suggest ye go over the data again and try to analyze what went wrong, else yer next attempt will end up just like yer previous one."

Rodney nods and pulls Carson into a full body hug. "Thanks Carson, you're the only one who takes the time to understand me." he whispers, emotion clear in his voice.

Carson grins a little. "I'm not too sure if I do understand ye, but at least I can say I try." he jokes. This makes Rodney laugh for a bit and he gets off the bed, walking towards the door. "Thanks... I'm going to start working on it right away." he says, confidence returning to him and he leaves the room.

Carson watches him go, smiling all the while as he falls back on Rodney's bed.

Rodney spend the next couple of hours behind his laptop, analyzing data, running simulations, becoming more and more annoyed whenever the stupid program tells him there's something wrong with his calculations. What does a laptop know anyway? It's not like it can think for itself!

For the first time in his life, his most trusted and most valued piece of machinery lets him down. Or was it really human error? Was Caldwell right?

Rodney shakes his head, he doesn't want to believe that, none of his men had made a mistake during the operation.

Finally, after several hours of typing, calculating and running the simulations for the up tenth time, Rodney's simulation succeeds.

With a victorious growl, he launches himself off the chair and runs towards Sheppard's quarters.

He knocks on the man's door and it takes a while before Sheppard opens and when he does, he doesn't really seem all too pleased to see Rodney there. Rodney decides not to pay too much attention to it and starts talking, outsmarting himself in the process.

"Harry Kay Dalling." He says, not sure if it'll make any sense and indeed, Sheppard stands there with a confused look on his face. "Who?" he asks.

Rodney starts explaining: "He was a scientist, working in the Manhattan project in Los Alamos. He was only 26 years old, accidentally radiated himself performing a critical mass experiment on two half spheres of plutonium." He stops talking for a moment to see Sheppard's reaction, but for all he can tell by the shaking of Sheppard's head, the poor man still doesn't understand where this story is supposed to lead.

"It took him a month to die." Rodney continues and Sheppard nods. "While his body was slowly shutting down from radiation poisoning, you know what he did with his last thirty days, hhm?" Rodney asks the colonel.

Sheppard raises his eyebrows, unsure whether or not he actually wishes to hear the answer to the man's question, but since he opened the door, he might as well listen to him.

"He worked…" Rodney answers his own question. "He tried, until his last breath, to understand what had happened to him so that others could learn from the tragedy. So that his work, his… death, wouldn't be rendered meaningless." Once again, he stays quiet, giving Sheppard the time to think about what he had just been told. When Sheppard doesn't reply, Rodney decides to continue. "Now, have you considered what would've happened if they'd just shut the project down after that?" he asks and finally Sheppard answers: "This is different." He simply says.

"Is it?" Rodney replies. "Collins' death is a pointless waste of life unless something comes to this and I am not sure that I can… I think I know what happened." He says, finally saying what it was that he came here for in the first place.

Sheppard seems to consider this for a moment and then he says: "Lets hear it," although he does seem a little sceptical about it.

"Can I come in?" Rodney asks.

"No," is Sheppard's answer.

He spent a good ten minutes on trying to make the man understand what had happened and what he thought could be changed, but finally, in the end, Rodney had convinced the reluctant colonel to go talk to Dr. Weir.

Happy that someone finally listened to him, he returns to his quarters, surprised to see that Carson is still there, fast asleep, on his bed. He smiles a little, it seemed that Carson was a little more worried about all this than he had expected. He takes a look at his watch, seeing that it's way past midnight. He decides not to wake his lover and just go to sleep himself.

As soon as he undressed until his underwear, something he had been doing since he got to know Carson, he silently crawls into bed, surprised to find Carson's arm around him as soon as he puts his head down on the pillow. He looks around, seeing that the man is still sleeping and he smiles again, giving the doctor a small kiss on his forehead. "Sleep well, my silly Scottish lover," He whispers, after that, he closes his eyes and falls asleep as well.

Early in the morning, Carson is woken up by someone yelling and kicking him in the knees, he turns around to find Rodney there, still asleep, but most definitely having a rather severe nightmare.

He sits up straight and wipes the sleep from his eyes.

"Rodney…" he says sleepily. When Rodney doesn't wake up, he puts his hands on the man's shoulders and shakes him a couple of times. Rodney's eyes fly open and they look around in terror. "What? Oh great… it was just a dream…" he huffs out, head falling back on the pillow.

"A rather vivid one to say the least… ye almost bruised my legs there." Carson jokes and when he notices the guilty look on Rodney's face, he quickly adds: "Are ye alright, love?"

Rodney nods. "I'm fine… just… I had a dream about the accident… you know, yesterday." He murmurs, clearly his mind hasn't caught up with reality yet.

Carson nods and gives the man a slight hug. "Today ye can change the fate, love." He says warmly.

Rodney nods again and smiles a little.

They stay in bed for a little longer and then Rodney gets dressed and goes off towards the briefing room where he hopes to find Dr. Weir.

Carson stays behind, he needs to get to work in a little while, but he doesn't wish to get out of bed yet, there's something intimate about resting in your lovers bed, especially when he trusts you enough to leave the room while you're still in there.

After a while, he decides that it's time to get dressed as well and he walks out of the room, locking the door behind him as he goes. He is just in time to see Rodney and Sheppard step through the gate and he silently wishes the two men the best of luck, seeing as he doesn't really have much faith in the operation to begin with.

He walks over to the infirmary, there's no one there, so he decides to get some paperwork done.

This however, proves to be way more difficult than he originally expected as his mind keeps drifting off into the direction of a certain Canadian named Rodney.

In the end, he gives up with a sigh of defeat, he chucks the immense stack of paperwork back in two drawers and walks over to the control room where Dr. Weir and Zelenka are gathered. The Stargate is activated and they are clearly talking to someone over the radio.

"Actually, I would like you to delay the test firing." Dr. Weir says.

"Why?" Colonel Sheppard asks over the radio.

Carson stands there to listen to the conversation. Clearly something had gone wrong and Rodney would not like what Dr. Weir had to say.

"We have reason to believe that the power source may not be controlled about any power level." Dr. Weir explains.

Carson can only imagine the current look on Rodney's face. This would irritate him no end.

"Radek?" he hears Rodney ask. Yep, he's annoyed alright.

"Rodney." Zelenka answers.

"Okay, we have been over this, I am doing this manually at half power, it's a cakewalk." Rodney tries to explain over the radio.

Zelenka doesn't seem to be impressed. "I don't zink it matters how much cake you walk on. I've been doing calculations on my own and I believe at the very act of trying to contain vacuum energy from our own space time creates an environment where the laws of physics cease to apply."

Carson becomes dizzy listening to all these scientific terms, but tries to understand it all as it may well mean the difference between Rodney's life or death.

"What are you on about?" he hears Rodney ask.

Zelenka walks through the control room as he continues to talk. "As power output increases new and exotic particles are continuously created and destroyed inside the containment chamber, interacting with each other and with the field itself. Eventually particles are created that cannot be predicted in this space time and they breach the containment field as hard radiation." He explains the situation at hand to Rodney, probably already knowing that it won't have any effect, Carson can tell, he knows Rodney better than who else on Atlantis. Still, he also knows that Zelenka has to try to make it clear to the Canadian scientist in case anything goes wrong. At that point, at least there is no way for Zelenka to be held responsible for negligence or something.

"As long as I'm monitoring the energy output manually, I can stop that before it happens." Rodney replies, Carson smiles to himself a little, despite the situation. This is his Rodney, the one he knows. Rodney would never give up in a situation like this, he's like a pit-bull attached to his target now. Zelenka, however, isn't planning to give up just yet. "You cannot predict something that is inheritably unpredictable."

It seems like these words at least gave some effects on Sheppard as the next thing Carson knows is: "Rodney?" coming from Sheppard. Rodney, however, once more only believes in his own brilliant mind. "I know what I'm doing." He says with some form of authority.

"Rodney, I'm trying to tell you, as a friend I have serious doubts." Zelenka says, he is becoming desperate and Carson can't blame the man.

"Well you're wrong, I'm sorry but there it is. And to bring this up now while I'm just about to do this speaks of nothing but professional jealousy." It seems that Rodney has had enough of it and is starting to act like his own, sarcastic, arrogant self again. Zelenka, at least, has had enough of it. "Fine!" he says in a tine that would make people's hair raise. "Kill yourself, just like the Ancients did."

Carson looks up at Zelenka from his hiding space between the two rooms. Kill himself? Surely that wasn't going to happen right? He wonders. Sheppard seems to think the same as he says: "Wow, wow, wow, what do you mean by that?"

Zelenka replies: "I believe that if the overload is allowed to continue the weapon acts as sort of a release valve to prevent catastrophic containment failure. The Ancients barely managed to shut it down and they lost their lives in the process."

Dr Weir quickly takes over from Zelenka as he stops speaking. "What we're suggesting is that the Wraith didn't kill everyone on that planet, it was the weapon itself."

This does indeed make the hairs on Carson's arms rise. If that is true, Rodney should get out of there right now. He does not want to burry him.

"That would explain why this is the only place left standing." Sheppard says, Dr. Weir and Zelenka nod to this, but Rodney is still on rampage and is desperate to reach his goal.

"Yes, well congratulations, you solved the mystery of how the Ancients screwed up 10.000 years ago. Doesn't mean that I will do the same. Look, I don't know how else to say this but none of you are capable of understanding this at the same level as I do, and Zelenka, that includes you."

Dr. Weir looks at Zelenka, but he doesn't appear to know anything else to say either. He raises his arms in defeat and stares back at Dr. Weir, shaking his head.

Dr. Weir thinks about this at a rapid speed and comes up with the following words: "Rodney, I can't afford to lose either one of you. Now tell me, can you do this?"

Rodney's answer is as clear as can be. "Yes." He simply says, victory clear in his voice, but Sheppard isn't too convinced yet.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

"Yes." Rodney answers again.

"Are you sure you're sure?" Sheppard asks again.

"I said yes!"

"Because if you're wrong…" Sheppard starts, but Rodney doesn't let him finish. "I'm not!" he shouts with some annoyance in his voice.

After that there is a long silence and Carson can imagine the two of them staring intently at each other, trying to gauge each other's willingness to continue with this. Finally, after what seems like several minutes, although only a few seconds have passed, Sheppard's voice gives the final judgement: 'We'll call you back after the test, how does that sound?"

Dr. Weir has no choice but to give in now. "You'd better." She says and after that, the gate is closed.

Carson takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and leans back against the wall, praying to every god he knows to bring him back safely.

"Carson, how long have you been standing there?" he suddenly hears and he opens his eyes, seeing Dr. Weir standing in front of him, carrying that same worried expression he often sees when he looks in the mirror.

He sighs again and pushes himself away from the wall. "Long enough to know that Rodney and colonel Sheppard might not return." He says silently.

Dr. Weir puts up a look of sympathy that doesn't really make Carson feel any better.

"Just have some faith in him, Carson, I know that he screws up sometimes, but it is also known that he works best under pressure." She tells him.

Carson nods, not really believing a word of it, but she is right, worrying won't solve anything.

An hour has passed and Carson kept walking from the infirmary to the gate room until Dr. Weir invited him into her office so that he would sit down. She tried to start a friendly conversation with the man, but every time she attempted to, he would answer in short sentences before looking out of the window again.

Both of them were immensely relieved when they finally noticed the gate activation and they ran out of Dr. Weir's office.

"What have we got?" Dr. Weir asks Chuck, one of the men behind the control panels. "We're receiving Colonel Sheppard's IDC ma'am" he says.

"Lower the shield." Dr. Weir demands and he does as he is told. It takes about a minute, but the a Jumper comes flying through at high speed, immediately coming to a halt as soon as they're entirely through the gate. "Raise the shield!" Sheppard shouts and Chuck does this. The next moment, there is an enormous bang and everyone in the control room is quiet and looks at the gate.

Carson feels like his heart is about to leap out of his chest. This was a terribly close call, they could've died, they almost did. "Oh thank God." He whispers.

"Rodney, I need to speak to you in my office right away." Dr. Weir's voice sounds angered and cold. Carson looks at her and can tell that she is far from pleased to have witnessed what she just did. He decides it's best to wait in Rodney's room.

On his way there, he crosses Rodney in the hallway, but he doesn't seem to notice him as he passes by.

He looks terrible, saddened and actually even quite frightened. Carson thinks it's not more than normal, seeing what happened, he would most probably be scolded at quite a lot.

He stands there for a moment to see Rodney disappearing from sight and he makes up his mind.

He walks back to the control room just in time to see Ronon and Teyla step through the gate as well.

"What has happened?" Teyla asks when she sees Carson.

Carson shakes his head. "I'm not sure, but Rodney screwed up… there was at least a big explosion and he almost got colonel Sheppard and himself killed." He explains.

"You blew up three quarters of a solar system!" they hear Dr. Weir shout.

"Well, five sixth actually…" Rodney replies.

Carson turns towards Ronon and Teyla again. "I believe that answers your question?" he asks.

Ronon grins and Teyla rolls her eyes and sighs. "Good old Rodney." She says.

It is not until an hour later that Rodney returns to his quarters. Carson is already waiting there.

Rodney looks at him and sits down on the bed, not saying anything, not that he has to, the whole base knows about what happened already. He is pretty sure that Carson is more than just a little angry at him at this point, who wouldn't be? He screwed up, he put the lives of himself and Sheppard in terrible danger.

At times like this, he really hates himself.

When he feels gentle arms wrapped around him and a head on his shoulder, he is very surprised. He turns around to look into a pair of brilliant blue eyes, covered in worry.

"I am so glad you're safe…" Carson says and he gives the stubborn scientist a lingering kiss.


	4. Instinct

Instinct

Instinct

"Carson, please open the door."

Dr. Weir stands in front of Carson's quarters, he refuses to open the door, or even to speak to anyone. "I understand that you're feeling bad about what happened, but you can't hide in there forever." She keeps listening at the door a little longer, but as there is no reply, she sighs and decides it's time to visit someone who might be more convincing.

She makes her way to the science labs and is not surprised to see Rodney there, still working on something she wouldn't even begin to understand.

"I'm busy." Rodney exclaims at the moment he hears the door opening, not even turning around to see who it is, whoever it is can wait, this is a lot more important.

"Rodney, it's me." Dr. Weir says and Rodney turns around.

"Elizabeth, sorry, I thought it was Zelenka again." He says, laughing a little in shame.

Dr. Weir smiles for a second as well and walks up to the hardworking scientist. "I understand that you're busy right now, but… I've got a favor to ask of you…" she says, hoping that saying it in this way won't provoke him too much.

Rodney sighs and folds his arms over his body. "You and everyone else, it seems. I'm fairly busy trying to solve the mystery of mysteriously disappearing energy…" he says, rolling his eyes in the process. Ever since he got back from the planet where they met the 'friendly Wraith girl' Ellia, he had been working non-stop because it seemed that one of the city chambers had blacked out and no one had a possible explanation to how it had happened.

Dr. Weir nods. "Yes, I understand that quite well, Rodney, and I wouldn't disturb you if I didn't believe this to be important as well. As a matter of fact, I think you're the only one capable of doing this." She decides to say, this would probably sprout his interest at first, but second of all, it's true. Sheppard, Teyla and even Ronon had tried to get Carson out of his room already, but none of them succeeded in doing so.

Rodney sighs again, but Dr. Weir can see that he wishes to hear more. "It's about Carson." She simply says, but those few simple words are enough to make Rodney nod and say: "Yes, I'm listening."

"He refuses to leave his room, he has locked himself in his quarters ever since you returned from the planet where you found Ellia." Dr. Weir explains.

Rodney nods again. "I already thought he wasn't himself after we left the place, but I didn't think he would lock himself up in his room… he's probably feeling guilty over what happened to that Wraith girl… after all, it was his retrovirus that triggered the event resulting in the girl's death as well as the death of it's caretaker." He murmurs, more to himself than to Dr. Weir. "But what do you want me to do? You already said that he won't let anyone talk to him."

Once again, Dr. Weir is in agreement to him. "True, but you also know that this is a slightly different situation, you two ARE supposed to be dating, remember?" she says with a grin.

Rodney is about to make a witty retort, but then he merely says: "True…"

He puts down his work and sighs. "Alright, I'll give it a try, but I can't promise you anything." He says, seeing as it's normally him who needs counseling from the sweet Dr. Beckett after some failed experiment, he himself isn't really an expert in this area yet.

Dr. Weir knows this quite well and nods towards Rodney. "Good luck." She says with a kind smile and Rodney leaves.

He reaches Carson's quarters and knocks the door. "Carson, either get the hell out of your room or let me in." he says, his voice clear but kind.

The person on the other side of the door stays quiet.

Rodney sighs and is just about to continue talking as Carson suddenly replies: "Go away, Rodney… I don' wish to see anyone righ' now." His voice sounds sad and quiet, but there's no mistaking the authority in it.

"Excuse me? Do you know who you are talking to?" Rodney asks, but again, there's no response from Carson. "You are talking to your boyfriend, the one who'd really like to talk to you and comfort you, the one who is usually the one in need of comfort and who would like to return the favor now." He feels vulnerable saying it like that while standing in the hallway, but luckily there's no one around, so there's no one who can hear him.

As Carson stays quiet again, Rodney looses his patience a little. "You know what, Carson? I am being quite considerate here, thinking about your feelings and all, but as you well know, I am an expert with mechanics and I can just as easily open this door from this side as you can from the other side, so it's up to you. Either you let me in, or I let myself in." he says, his voice almost threatening, but strangely enough, he can almost hear it's own compassion in it.

Carson had been lying on his bed in his quarters for the better part of the evening and although he really appreciated the efforts made by all of his team members and also Dr. Weir, he'd really like to be alone right now.

He had screwed up, big time, two people had died, all because of him. He needed some time to think this over and feel sad.

When he hears the familiar voice of Rodney on the other side of the door, his heart jumps a little, but seeing as he's most probably only there because one of the others told him to do so, he doesn't wish to let him in. Instead, he tells him to go away.

Rodney, however, seems to be quite persistent in the matter and telling him that he wants to comfort him and all… he even goes as far as threatening to break the door open.

He sighs and stands up, walking over to the door and opening it. "Rodney…" he says, his voice sounding a little distant.

Rodney nods and walks inside. "Glad you finally decided to listen." He says, grabbing the other man's shoulder for a second.

"Ye didn' really leave me with much of a choice here." Carson retorts, his answer a little too snappy to his liking, but he wishes to make it clear to the Canadian that he does not appreciate what has happened.

Rodney turns around to face the man. "Carson, you are always there for me whenever I need help, this time, let me do the same for you. It's not like you need to carry all your burdens on your own anymore." He says softly. Once that might have been the case, but not anymore, Carson has him now and he will do whatever it takes to help him and be there for him.

Carson is surprised to hear this from his lover, he usually isn't the type to go talking all sentimental and all. "Rodney I… I would've come to ye eventually…" he says, knowing that's not really true, but he doesn't want to hurt the man's feelings either.

"Well, now I'm here, so there's no need to do so anymore. Come over here for a minute." Rodney says, sitting down on the Scot's bed.

Carson sighs, he closes the door and walks over to Rodney who, for a change, has a rather worried frown on his face while he's with him. "There's no need to be worried about me, Rodney." He says in a soft voice, but as he sits down and he feels Rodney's arms being wrapped around him, he sure is glad that the man came over.

"Maybe so, but I do and you can't stop me from doing that. You're feeling guilty over what happened and I… well… I know I'm not really the best person to deal with emotions, but I do want to be there for you." Rodney says in a soft voice. This makes Carson smile a little, this is indeed quite uncharacteristic for the man. For some reason, this triggers him to start talking.

"I screwed up, Rodney…" he whispers. "I screwed up big time."

Rodney shakes his head. "You did what you thought was right." He replies, knowing that's what he always does when he screws up, but he doesn't want to agree with the man that he actually DID screw up.

"I know, but tha' wasn' good enough, now was it? If I hadn' been so bloody interested in this Wraith lass, she wouldn' have taken the Retrovirus, would she? Then she would've still been alive and the old man wouldn' have died either and…" Carson spills out his thoughts and emotions while hiding in Rodney's arms. Rodney holds him tight while listening to him. He understands what the man is trying to say, but he already has his answer ready. "If you hadn't done this, we would never have known about the second Wraith and the man would never have known that his treatment didn't work, he would've continued giving it to her and everything would've stayed the same. You made a hell of a difference, Carson, even though it didn't work out the way you planned it." He says, saying it forcefully, hoping that Carson would actually listen to his words. When Carson stays quiet, he continues: "You're thinking about the lives that were lost that day. I'm thinking about the lives that were saved, about the people that don't have to live in fear anymore because they think that the Wraith will come to feed on them any time soon. You saved more lives than you have lost them, Carson, I think that in some way, you should be proud of yourself."

"The retrovirus did more harm than good…" Carson says and Rodney is shocked to hear how much sadness there is in his voice. "It was something I made. How can I not feel guilty about it?"

Rodney doesn't know the answer to that yet, but he solves it by kissing Carson on his forehead and stroking his hair. He feels Carson shuddering in his arms and he frowns is he crying? He decides to stay quiet and just continue to hold him like that, so that Carson can regain his self control for a moment.

After a moment, Carson looks up. His eyes are wet and there are red stripes down his cheeks, but his mouth shows a very slight smile. "Thank you, Rodney…" he whispers.

"For what?" Rodney asks, clearly not understanding why he's suddenly being thanked.

Carson cups the man's cheek for a moment. "For everything. Ye coming here, practically forcing yer way in and being there for me… but most of all… for not asking questions just a minute ago…" he says, blushing a little.

Rodney looks at him, liking it a lot when he blushes. "Anything for you, love." He says, trying to mimic Carson's Scottish accent, which makes the man laugh in earnest.

Rodney takes a deep breath. "If you really worry about the retrovirus so much… use every bit of free time to try and perfect it… try to understand what happened so that you won't make the same mistake again." He suggests.

Carson nods. "Aye, yer right." He whisper, kissing the man softly on his mouth before standing up. "I think I'd be better off apologizing to colonel Sheppard and the others…"

Rodney grins and nods. "I don't think they blame you for anything but you go ahead if it makes you feel better." He says, grabbing the man by the waste.

"Aye… how can I ever thank ye enough, love?" he asks, stroking the man's hair.

Rodney shrug's his shoulders. "Ah you know, just return to me during the night… that'll be enough." He jokes, cupping the man's butt.

Carson cocks an eyebrow and says: "Of course, love, force yer way into my room and wait for me, then I'll be sure to see ye."

Rodney grins and watches Carson leave the room, he falls back on the bed, thinking that it didn't even go all that bad for his first attempt to actually use other emotions than anger.

It is near midnight as Rodney gets out of bed to see how Carson's doing. He hasn't returned yet and Rodney has the distinct feeling that he's not planning to return yet either.

He walks out of the room and goes over to the infirmary. When he can't find Carson there, he walks over to one of the medical labs next to the infirmary and there he is, pouched over one of the telescopes, concentration clear on his face.

Rodney smiles and decides to let the man work. He'll drag him out of there first thing in the morning.


	5. Poisoning the Well

Poisoning the Well

Poisoning the Well

This chapter was made for Moonlight who wanted me to do a chapter about Poisoning the Well, so here it is ;)

--

It was past midnight when Carson decided it was time to pull Rodney away from his job, he walked through the city to his last known position, an unknown Ancient lab.

It turned out that the man wasn't really all that hard to find, Carson had only been searching for about ten minutes when he heard the man cursing loudly. He ran towards him only to find out that Rodney had bumped his head into a cabinet close to a device that he was studying.

"Rodney…" Carson says in an almost parental way. "Isn' it about time ye call it a day?"

Rodney looks up, his face a grimace of annoyance. "I didn't stop you from trying to refine the retrovirus, did I?" he asks, "This is important to me, so just leave me be for a little bit."

Carson sighs, yes, he could've waited for an answer like that. He'd been working for days straight on the retrovirus, only leaving his project to go off-world whenever he was needed somewhere.

"Aye, I admit tha's true, but I do think ye need some time off. You become too cranky whenever ye are tired." Carson says in a joking way, although he means every word of it.

Rodney turns back to the device, carelessly flipping a switch which immediately brings the thing to life. Rodney jumps up, bumping his head into the cabinet once more. With watering eyes, he turns around. "Now see what you've done!" he shouts. "If you hadn't come here to interrupt me in my work, I would never have made the mistake to do this!"

Carson puts his hands on his hips and looks angrily back at the man. He is about to make a retort as a sudden energy wave catches them both off balance.

Rodney opens his eyes to a completely different scenery. He lies on the grass of a planet that looks remotely familiar, but he can't really place it somehow.

He looks up to see Carson standing on the edge of a hill, looking over a city in front of them. "Where the hell are we?" Rodney murmurs, getting to his feet.

"Hoff…" Carson replies, his voice monotone.

"Hoff?" Rodney wonders, walking up to Carson and seeing that he's correct. The planet Hoff looks just the way they left it, about a year before. Seems like the Wraith hadn't come to destroy it after all.

"Come on, lets check it out." He urges the Scottish doctor, but the good man seems to be a little reluctant to go. "Carson, we can't stay here, we need to get back to Atlantis." He pushes the man to walk down the hill and slowly, Carson starts moving on his own.

"Why did we end up here?" Carson asks after a while, they've reached the border of the city and there are people walking around, although they don't seem to be all too interested in the two men walking confusedly around the city. In fact, they don't seem to take any notice of them at all.

"Lets go to the research facility." Rodney suggests and Carson nods. Although he isn't really all that pleased about being back here at this planet, he is interested to see how they are doing now, with the Hoffan drug in use and all.

It takes them a little longer than normally, because they have to keep making way for the Hoffan people, but eventually, they get to the building. It looks amazingly intact, untouched by either human or Wraith. Maybe they were correct, maybe the Wraith just moved on once they found out these humans couldn't be fed upon.

"Beckett." They suddenly hear and they both turn around to see Sheppard walking up to them.

"Colonel Sheppard!" Carson says happily, but Sheppard doesn't seem to be looking at him, he just walks right passed him and Carson follows him with his eyes. What he sees there frightens him a little. "Me?" he wonders, squinting his eyes to see if it's really true.

"Major." The other Carson says.

"Major?" Rodney wonders, suddenly a flash of enlightenment strikes him. "Carson…" he says in a meaningful tone. "We are in trouble."

"Aye…" Carson replies. "We got sent back in time… right?"

Rodney nods. "Indeed we did…" he says. "But that still doesn't explain why Sheppard didn't walk right into us wondering what the hell we're doing here, or why there are two Carson Becketts around.

Carson shakes his head, that's quite true, Sheppard isn't the kind to just ignore these kind of things. "Maybe we turned invisible?" he suggests, but Rodney shakes his head. "I merely think we're in a different dimension… try touching Sheppard for a moment." He demands and although Carson feels really stupid doing this, he walks up to the man and places a hand on his shoulder. Instead of touching solid matter, he just goes right through it and he looks around, frightened look on his face. "Rodney… we really do have a problem…" he says.

Rodney, however, is already working on the next step, he walks over to a door and tries to open it. The door opens and Rodney stares into a broom closet.

"Alright, this is good, at least we're able to touch things like these… now all we need to do is figure out a way to get off this planet and back to Atlantis." He says, not sounding all too confident about it.

Carson sighs. "We'll figure something out, Rodney." He replies.

"And by that you mean that I'll figure something out and you'll merely agree with it, right?" Rodney snaps, the lack of sleep evidently getting to him.

Carson shrug's his shoulders and decides not to reply, he looks around and sees the other Carson and Sheppard leave the hallway. He decides to follow him, Rodney right on his tail. "Were are we going?" Rodney asks as they turn another corner.

"The Hoffan infirmary it seems." Carson replies with pain in his heart. "I think we're about to relive the manufacturing of the Hoffan drug." His voice sounds bitter and Rodney nods. He can quite clearly understand why Carson doesn't really like this part of their little trip. He manufactured the drug, along with Perna, a woman he really liked at that time, also, a woman that would eventually die from the effects of the drug.

Sheppard opens the door to the infirmary and both Carsons and Rodney enter the room.

There are already some sick people in there and Perna is walking around, trying to make everyone as comfortable as possible, or rather, trying to fit everyone in there as more and more people arrive.

"They've already inoculated the Hoffans with the drug." Carson says softly, his eyes move to Perna, knowing that these will be her last hours. Rodney nods. "We need to leave with Sheppard and ourselves when we decide to abandon the project." He says, not really looking forward to reliving this whole nightmare again. His eyes cross those of his lover, seeing immense pain in them. "I'm sorry…" he whispers.

Carson shakes his head. "There really is no other solution, is there." He states out.

He follows himself through the process and watches as the Atlantis medical team arrives. Everything happens the way he remembers it, it's all the same. He closes his eyes, trying to forget the pain he felt before, the fear and anger that ran through him all the time when he was trying to cure the patients, knowing there was no way of solving this in the first place.

He opens his eyes again, seeing the slightly younger version of himself running around the infirmary, trying to stop these people from dying, giving them injections that would normally stop the organs from shutting down, but which don't seem to make any difference at this point.

He feels a warm arm wrapped around his waist and he looks around, Rodney stands there with a concerned look on his face, knowing that Carson doesn't wish to relive this, that it hurt him beyond belief and then there is Teyla, walking up to the other Carson, trying to make something clear to him, but he is too busy trying to cure the people or otherwise, give them a comfortable death.

"Listen to her." Carson whispers to the other Carson. Rodney looks at him, seeing tears in his eyes.

Finally, the other Carson has caught on to the situation, rushing over to the bed of his former lover, now lying there, dying in a hospital bed.

Carson breaks free from Rodney's touch and walks over to the bed as well, looking over Perna the way the other Carson does as well, except for the fact that the younger Carson is able to touch and he isn't.

He hears himself talking to Perna, the clear sound of desperation in his voice, the pain behind it and then Perna grows silent, hear breathing has stopped and the younger Carson starts crying. Perna is dead.

The current Carson turns around, swallowing away a great lump in his throat while he stops himself from crying all over again and then he sees a second Rodney, hidden behind the door, staring at the younger Carson who is perched over Perna's bed.

He walks over to the current Rodney and nods at the other one. "How long had you been standing there?" he asks.

Rodney looks at himself as well, at that time he was happy that Carson hadn't noticed him there as there was a look of sadness on his face that had nothing to do with the death of hundreds of people, but more with the fact that Carson was crying over a woman.

"A few minutes, I arrived at the moment Teyla told you about Perna." Rodney says, seeing the other him walking away from the door, unable to watch the Scot's pain any longer.

"I remember how much I wanted to walk over to you… how much I wanted to hug and comfort you, but as you know, I am terrible at that and at that time, I didn't think you'd be even remotely interested in that kind of comfort." Rodney explains with a slight grin and Carson manages to get a small smile on his face as well. "Aye, although not for the reasons ye might think. I thought you were the one not interested, but then again, I was grieving over a lost one, so no, you made the right choice." He says.

Hours pass and more and more dead Hoffans get transported out of the infirmary, no new patients are being brought in and the place becomes more and more empty.

After a good six hours, Carson's job is finally finished and he returns to the others, saddened and pained.

The other Carson and Rodney follow him as he goes, finding the rest of the team waiting down the hall where they meet with chancellor Druhin. The man is actually rather surprised to see them leave, but he lets them go nonetheless.

Before they go, he shows the team a paper with the results of the vote.

"94 in favor…" The current Carson says at the same time as the other Carson. Rodney pats the man's shoulder and motions him to follow the team as they make way to the gate.

"Will we be able to pass through the gate?" Carson suddenly wonders, they are in a different dimension, so it might just be a bit of a pain to do whatever people do in the other dimension.

Rodney nods. "Yes, we will… I've come across this before and I know that it's possible." He says, smiling in comfort.

"Alright then." Carson replies, rubbing his hands and sighing a little as the gate is activated.

The first team walks through and Carson and Rodney quickly run after them before the gate deactivates again. The next moment they find themselves back on Atlantis.

"Finally…" Rodney whispers. He is about to walk towards the lab he abandoned earlier on, but he finds out that Carson has other plans.

Carson had just seen himself walking out of the gate room and he was followed by Rodney a little while later, he wonders why he had never seen Rodney following him, even though it seemed like the man was planning to talk to him, therefore, he walks after himself.

"Carson, we don't have time for this." Rodney says, running after the current Carson when he leaves the gate room.

Carson doesn't listen to him and watches as he sees himself walk into his quarters, tears on his cheeks.

A moment later, Rodney arrives at the door and he stands there, hand raised in the air, ready to knock on the door, but something's stopping him. He takes a deep breath and prepares to knock again, but an outraged yell and something slamming into the wall makes him stop his efforts. He shakes his head and walks away.

The current Rodney looks at Carson. "I was throwing one of my heaviest medical books against the wall to make myself feel better." Carson explains. Rodney nods. "Alright, now can we go?" he asks in return and Carson nods back.

They run over the grounds of Atlantis, not minding the people they run into, as they'll just pass right through them anyway.

Rodney finds the Ancient lab and the device just the way he found it the first time, covered in a lot of dust, but most definitely operational.

"Alright, I'm going to switch it on." He warns Carson. "Don't blame me if we suddenly end up between the dinosaurs."

Carson laughs a little, but judging from the fear in his eyes, he takes this joke too seriously.

There is another energy burst going through their bodies and everything goes black once more.

Carson opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling of his own infirmary. "Hello?" he asks, looking around and seeing some of his doctors. Rodney is there as well, awake and eating in his bed.

"Dr. Beckett, it's good to see you awake again." One of the nurses says as she walks over to him. Carson sits up straight, looking through the infirmary. "What day is it?" he asks.

"It's Tuesday." The nurse replies. Carson nods. "And ehm… what year is it?" he now wishes to know. The nurse starts to laugh. "Don't worry Dr. Beckett, you're in the right place at the right time." She says, no doubt, Rodney has already briefed them of the happenings. He looks around and Rodney nods at him. "It's true, really." He says with his mouth full of meat.

Carson breaths out in relief and lets himself fall back on the pillow.

"It's good to be home." He says as he closes his eyes.


	6. The Lost Boys

"I don't have the slightest desire to go on this mission

"I don't have the slightest desire to go on this mission." Rodney informs Carson as they walk through the corridors. Carson laughs a little. "Who knows what ye will find there, Rodney. Every mission is worth checking out, tha's why yer on an expedition." He says as a witty reply.

Rodney shakes his head. "There is nothing there, I just know it. We're just following up on something Teyla's friends said, but as you know, most of them aren't as advanced as we need them to be." He points out.

Carson sighs, for Rodney, there is only a point to a mission when there is something to gain, he doesn't even care about establishing relationships. "Just go on this mission, Rodney." He says.

"Or else what?" Rodney replies, a little more angry that he would've liked to ask it.

Carson steps in front of him, making him come to a halt. "I have this evening off and I was planning to spend it with ye but if ye decide to stay behind and deny Teyla this one favour, I don' think ye'll be getting much fun out of it." He threatens.

This makes Rodney grin. "Alright then…" he says as if he's a kid with bad behaviour. "I'll go on this mission, but this evening you're promising me will have to be damned good."

Carson grins back. "Aye, I'll make sure of tha'" he says, he kisses Rodney and steps aside, softly pinching his ass as he walks passed him.

Carson looks after him, sighing and chuckling a little. Same old Rodney McKay, he'll never change that part of him and to be honest, Carson wouldn't want him any other way.

At least there is no immediate danger to this mission, he decides to tell himself as he walks back to the infirmary where he has to wait for someone to fall ill or something.

Off-world, Rodney is complaining about everything, the planet itself, the weather, the fact that he doesn't want to go on this mission…

"Look, we got a tip from one of Teyla's contacts and we're following it up." Sheppard finally decides to say after listening to his wining for quite some time.

"And this is like what… the umpteenth tip we've followed in search for a Zed PM?" Rodney asks. Teyla doesn't like the way Rodney is talking about this, so she plans to say something back, but she never gets any further than saying: "Rodney…" as Rodney just continues talking.

"Look, I just wanna make it clear that every second I am out of my lab is a second the galaxy goes without another ground breaking…" he never gets to finish his sentence, however, as the next moment they get shot by Wraith stunners.

The moment they wake up, they find themselves strapped to a chair with a bag over their heads and Rodney is just starting to wonder why a routine mission has turned into a dangerous one when someone removes the bag from his head.

Sheppard immediately starts to try and talk the men holding them into releasing them from their binds, but just as soon as they are willing to do so, another voice sounds up to them, sounding very familiar to say the least.

Ford comes walking into the room and Rodney gets the strange feeling that things have just gone from bad to worse. Even though Ford was once one of their men, he no longer is, and there is no doubt in his mind that the man is as crazy as a tap-dancing Wraith. He takes a deep breath and stares at the table. All around him, people are beginning to move in discomfort, not to mention, Ronon is trying to attack the man even though he is bound to a chair.

After a while of talking, they are released and Ford is telling them to eat something. When he himself takes a bite of it, Rodney can no longer stop himself and he digs into his food. It was always one of his weaknesses and he knows it all too well.

They continue to talk for a little while, Ford explains that he escaped the Wraith by killing them all and taking their enzyme, something that Rodney would normally think of as disgusting, but his growling stomach will not stop him from eating this time.

Then Ford tells them how he got his men and how they are also on the enzyme and even that there are Wraith, alive in the place they are in at this very moment.

This scares Rodney a bit and he starts eating even faster.

At some point, Ford starts asking people if they think he's crazy and Rodney can only stop himself from snorting and saying out loud: "Oh hell yes you do." Instead he says: "Are we speaking in relative terms or ehm…" but he mentally smacks himself from saying this.

Ford turns towards him. "Look… Chase here has really fine-tuned the enzyme. We know how to administer it now, how to regulate it, refine it… We've got a way to even regulate food with it." He says.

Everyone now looks at him, food in their hands, still chewing on what is left in their mouths.

"Excuse me?" Rodney says with his mouth full of food.

"Congratulations." Ford replies. "You just had your first dose."

"What?!" Rodney says in a frightened way and he and the others immediately spit out the food they were eating.

"I thought long and hard about how to show you that the enzyme was safe." As he gets no positive reaction, he becomes a little more desperate. "to convince you that this is the first step to defeating the Wraith, so you can convince Weir, convince the military…"

"Are you out of your mind?" Rodney yells, standing up from his chair, positively angered this time. Ford looks at him with slight confusion on his face. "Hey, settle down…" he says, trying to reason with the man.

"No I will not settle down, I have been drugged against my will you little punk!" Rodney is still shouting and his face is turning a dangerous shade of red.

"You should not have done this, Aiden." Teyla comes to his rescue.

Ford, however, seems to be able to laugh about this, he claps his hands as he says: "Hey, be as mad as you want, in a couple of days, you'll be thanking me. We'll all have a good laugh about this now eat up." He points at the food and walks away.

Back on Atlantis, Dr. Weir sits in her office, wondering why Sheppard and his team have not yet returned. As the gate activates, she walks towards it, but her hopes of seeing Sheppard walk through the gate are shattered as she sees Lorne and his team.

She decides to ask the team to go to the planet where Sheppard went and Lorne and his men leave right away.

As soon as they are gone, Dr. Weir walks over to the infirmary to tell Carson that the team will be a bit late.

"Late? Wha' do ye mean by tha'?" Carson asks.

"That means that they have not yet returned, nor have the left a message of an kind." Dr. Weir says.

Carson puts down the stack of paperwork he had been carrying around and watches Dr. Weir with some nervousness on his face. "I see…" he says. "But that happens more often right, I mean… them not reporting in and all…" he tries to hide the fact that he's worried, but he doesn't seem to be able to do so all too well, Dr. Weir puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry Carson, I've already sent Lorne and his team to go looking for them and I'm sure they are fine…" she says with a kind smile on her face.

Carson looks at her. "Excuse me, it is my job to be worried about people and the fact that colonel Sheppard and his team, including Rodney, are off-world somewhere and we don' know what they're up to tends to have me a tad worried." He says, a little snappier than he meant to.

Dr. Weir laughs about this a little. "I know Carson, you really are the type to worry too much. I am sure they are all doing well." She says, although in her heart, she is not too sure about it.

Back on the planet where Rodney and the others are being held, Rodney is quickly losing his mind. The idea of Wraith enzyme coursing through his body is somewhat frightening to say the least. Not to mention, he had just found out that there is no possible way to leave the planet as Ford has stolen the control crystals of the Stargate and although he is desperately trying to find a way out of this mess, he can't seem to get himself to think straight.

He keeps telling the team about how he feels but it seems that he is pissing off Ronon in the process.

The next moment Ford comes waltzing into the cave, telling Sheppard and Teyla to join them on some sort of off-world mission. Teyla is cleverly to convince Ford that they will be in need of weapons, but Ford sees right through this and he doesn't allow it to them.

Rodney asks Ford what he and Ronon should be doing in the meantime, but he finds out that they are supposed to stay behind with the rest of the enzyme-freaked soldiers. He also gets to hear that if Sheppard tries to escape or kill someone during the off-world mission, hit life will soon be ended. "Can't think of a better way of spending the afternoon…" he says in the most sarcastic tone he can muster.

He and Ronon get a little tour around the place and Rodney keeps looking at Ronon to see if the man is thinking about a way out of there. Honestly, he has never really been able to read the man all that well as he always tends to do things that no one would expect. But then again, that's why he is so important to the team, Rodney understands this, as they often need the element of surprise and Rodney is more the type to surprise the opponent by babbling their ears off, Teyla well… she's Teyla, more of a negotiator than a fighter, but one with incredible skill and then there's Sheppard; lazy-ass, but still capable of accomplishing things beyond Rodney's imagination. Yes, having someone like Ronon on the team would certainly help in times of an unforeseen attack.

He just wonders why he had failed to see it up until now, for some reason he tends to see things in a completely different way now. It's got to be because of the enzyme.

Once again, he starts to flex his muscles, however little he might have of those. That little punk, how dare he dosing him up on the enzyme? He had no right to do that, no one wishes to be drugged against his will.

Yet he thinks it's best to just sit and wait for someone to come and rescue them.

He walks around with Chase for a while and the man shows him some sort of research lab where they had learned to refine and administer the Wraith enzyme. He also learns a lot more about how the Wraith work and how they are not as much a combined power as he once thought they were. Once he's back on Atlantis, he'll be sure to tell this to Dr. Weir, it might just be very valuable information.

Dr. Weir stands in front of the control panel as the gate becomes active, she is hoping for some sort of good news from Lorne's side, but seeing as he merely gives them an update rather than stepping through the gate himself, she fears that nothing good has come out of the search yet. And she is right.

A video image of Lorne shows up on the screen, his face looks a bit troubled as he starts speaking. "We've just finished our scans, ma'am. They're not here." He says.

"Could they have headed to another planet?" Dr. Weir asks, she's starting to feel slightly concerned about this now.

"It's possible." Lorne admits. "But as you know it's standard procedure to check in and tell us first, they didn't do that, so…"

Dr. Weir is quick to take grasp of the situation. "They might have been taken off-world against their will." She immediately says.

"Yeah." Is Lorne's only reply.

Dr. Weir decides to send in Zelenka to help with the recovery of the gate addresses that were dialled from the Stargate on that planet recently.

She is just about to go to the infirmary to talk to Carson when she finds him right in front of her. "Have they found them?" he immediately asks.

Dr. Weir shakes her head. "I'm sorry Carson, there is no word of them yet. Scans indicate that they are not even on the planet anymore. As to where they went… I have absolutely no idea." She admits.

Carson strokes a hand through his hair and looks at the Stargate. "Let me go." He says in a convinced voice. "Maybe they've left some kind of clue something Lorne and his men have missed." He looks at Dr. Weir with desperation in his eyes and she shakes her head. "No Carson, I need you here in case they return. They might be in need of medical attention." She says in a voice that leaves no mistaking that this is her final decision.

Carson looks like he's about to complain about this, but then he changes his mind and nods. "Alrigh'…" he says, turning around and walking away. "I'll be heading towards the infirmary, keep me informed about the happenings please." He says.

Back in Ford's cave, Sheppard, Teyla and Ford's men have returned from their mission. It turned out to be a great success and Ford decides to tell them why this was an important mission.

Rodney finds his head spinning. In some way he had expected Ford to do something crazy, but this is more than crazy, even for a man hyped up on Wraith enzyme.

Conquering a Wraith Hive ship. Rodney can clearly see in how many ways this is a terrible idea.

As Ford asks for opinions about this idea and Sheppard is quick to say 'wow', Rodney is forced to step in and point out his own opinion in the matter. "Let me see if I can couch what colonel Sheppard means by 'wow' in more explicit terms. That is a terrible plan."

Teyla tries to make him stop talking, but he is on a role already and is not about to stop talking until he has made it very clear to the man what he thinks about this whole operation. "Made all the more threatening by the fact that you think it's a good plan." He finishes his sentence.

"What's wrong with it?" Ford asks, clearly not understanding what it is that makes this mission so dangerous.

"What's right with it?" Rodney asks. "Okay lets just, for a second, give it a reckless abandon and assume it will be possible to plant a single charge large enough to destroy an entire Hive ship."

Chase steps in and takes over from Ford. "We're planning on secondary explosions in the Dart bay." He says but Rodney holds up his hand because he wants him to be quiet. "Regardless." He replies. "The Hive ship will be on a hyperspace pause, yes, but it will not enter the planet's atmosphere. Nor will it take up any sort of stable orbit. It will be flying through space. That means that unless the enzyme allows you to jump a lot higher than you've let on…" Rodney is interrupted by Ford. "We have a spaceship." He says in a calm matter of speaking.

"Oh yeah?" Rodney asks. "Really? What's it made out of huh? Bark?"

Ford smiles about this a little. "No it's real, McKay." He simply says, nodding a little. "In fact, it's the only ship I'd feel comfortable using on a mission like this."

Rodney frowns his eyebrows and looks at the faces of his team members, they don't seem to understand much more of it than he does.

As soon as they have arrived at the destination, however, things start to become slightly more clear to Rodney as a Wraith dart is revealed.

As always, they rely on him to actually repair the damaged dart, but he doesn't really feel comfortable doing it if it means flying it straight towards their death.

The fact that Sheppard is even considering the possibility frightens him beyond belief and he tries to express his concern once more, though no one even seems to be listening to him.

When Ford asks him whether or not he can fix it, he decides to say that he probably won't be able to do it. Sheppard, however, interprets it as a yes and also tells this to Ford and at this point, Rodney feels something snap inside of him. "Aren't you the one not taking the enzyme? You're supposed to be the clear voice of reason here." He says in an angry voice.

Ford is losing his patience a little. "Look, can you fix it?" he asks.

"Look, even if I could… drug me all you want, I'm not doing this." Rodney replies, pointing a threatening finger in Sheppard's direction before walking off in a fairly fast pace.

How can anyone possibly think that this is a good idea? Anyone in the right mind would immediately notice that this is a plan build to fail on it's first attempt.

He hears someone walking after him, but he doesn't feel like talking right now, it will only result in more screaming and his head is already pounding as it is.

"Rodney!" Sheppard is right behind him and he's going to try to convince him to fix the dart anyway, Rodney just knows it.

"Look, maybe you are on the enzyme, maybe Ford lied because no rational person would think that was a good plan." He shouts angrily. See, it really did result in shouting already and he can't find himself thinking straight at the moment.

Sheppard runs up to him, talking to him all the while. "A million things could go wrong. I know that. I just…" as Rodney keeps on walking and doesn't seem to have any interest in talking to him, or even listening, Sheppard orders him to stop. "Shut up and listen." He says. When Rodney stays silent and looks at him, Sheppard continues. "You fix that dart, we all get out of here. I know it's risky but Ford's not thinking straight, so…"

"What are you talking about?" Rodney asks, more pissed out about the fact that he doesn't have a clue what the colonel is talking about than anything else.

"I'll insist you are all on the team. I'll scoop you up and instead of flying towards the Hive ship we'll fly out to Atlantis." Sheppard explains.

Rodney, however, doesn't seem to understand the plan. "How?" he insists on knowing.

"That dart is gonna have it's own DHD right?" Sheppard says, more a statement than a question.

"Of course." Rodney replies and Sheppard continues. "Well get that damned thing fly-worthy we're all going home." He says, he feels like explaining a really easy story to a four-year-old kid, but Rodney finally seems to understand what this is all about.

"Right, of course…" he says, some hope shining through in his eyes. "See, you see… I would've thought of that myself before I became a drug addict."

He goes on to apologize to Sheppard and they head back to the dart so that he can fix it.

Lorne and his team return to Atlantis and this time, Carson is waiting for them there, along with Dr. Weir. He is eager to find out what the team has done so far.

"What have you got?" Dr. Weir asks as soon as they are all safe on the other side.

Lorne gives her a guilty look. "We've got fifty possible gate addresses, but we have absolutely no clue whether or not they are correct." He explains to her.

"Well then I suggests you check them." Dr. Weir says, already showing some form of slight annoyance.

"Well you see, zat might just prove a little more difficult zan you would imagine." Zelenka steps in. "Ze DHD's were not made for storing gate addresses. We have no way of knowing whezzer or not zese addresses are correct." He explains.

"In any case, I need you to get working on these addresses and find out which are real and which are not. We need our men back, Dr. Zelenka." Dr. Weir replies. She had just accused Carson of worrying too much, but now she finds herself doing the exact same thing.

Zelenka nods and starts working on it immediately.

Dr. Weir turns towards Carson and sighs. "This could turn out to be one long day." She says.

Carson nods.

Rodney continues to work on the dart and he finds out that it's going a lot easier now that he doesn't have to take the enzyme anymore. He has Sheppard to thank for that, he had convinced Ford that he would work a lot better if he didn't take a regular dose of the stuff.

One thing he isn't really comfortable about though, is that during the time he was taking the enzyme, he completely forgot about Carson, about how much he might be worrying right about now and how much he probably misses him.

Now, however, as they are close to getting the dart to work again, Rodney is feeling quite delighted about it as it means that they can go home soon.

He and Chase make a few final adjustments and go back to the cave to inform Sheppard and Ford that they've finished their work.

Ford is more than happy to hear this and insists on getting to the next step immediately.

They walk over the field, taking all the necessary equipment for the mission with them so that they can leave immediately.

As soon as Sheppard has taken place inside the dart, Rodney starts to explain what will happen once he tries to fly it, what he will see and what he has done to unsure everyone's safety. After he's done talking, Ford walks up to him, telling him to go with Kaneo, one of his soldiers so that he can gear up for the mission. As soon as he is almost finished gearing up, however, he hears Ford telling them that there's been a slight change in plans and the next moment there are stunners aimed at his head.

"McKay is going to stay here while we run the op." Ford explains, thus ensuring that none of the Atlantis team escapes during the mission.

Rodney can't say that he is the least happy about hearing this and as he gets pulled away from the rest of the team, he splutters and tries to resist as much as possible. It has no effect, however as he is merely a scientist and therefore he stands no chance against Wraith enzyme-hyped soldiers.

On the Atlantis base, people are really starting to get worried by now, Dr. Weir has called in Lorne in order to express her concern.

"If they were okay they would've radioed in by now." She says after a small conversation with the man.

"I understand that, ma'am." Lorne replies, sitting in a chair while watching Dr. Weir walking in nervous circles around the room.

"I want everyone who is cleared for off-world activity to help with the search. The Deadalus is on it's way from Earth then they'll be able to help but until then, it's up to us."

"And I know that, but I need you to understand that it is going to take a very long time to search all the planets that are on that list. It… it could take months." Lorne says in a composed way.

Dr. Weir, who has finally found the peace to sit down, says: "We can't afford months, major."

Lorne sighs. "And I know that too." He says.

Dr. Weir nods at him and Lorne gets back to work.

Carson sits in the infirmary, waiting for an update on a possible rescue mission. He hopes everything will be alright, that Rodney will not be hurt.

He disgusts himself a little when he finds out that Rodney is the only person on his mind right now. Of course he also wants the rest of the team to be alright, but the thought of Rodney getting hurt, or even killed, makes him feel sick to the bone.

Rodney is starting to feel a little nervous, to his time estimate, his team should've been back a long time ago. He should've gone with them. It's always his fault when a mission turns out bad and okay, even though this time it was out of his control, it is once again his fault that his team is in trouble.

As he sits at the table, sulking in self-pity, he thinks about what he would've been doing right now if he hadn't been left behind. In that case they would've been back on Atlantis now and he would've been lying on Carson's arms unwilling to ever let go again. But no, here he is, in some cave on an unknown planet trapped with scary huge super soldiers.

He watches as one of them takes an injection of Wraith enzyme and it truly grosses him out.

"What, you want some?" the man asks.

Rodney stares at the table in disgust. "No, I'm good thank you." He replies.

"Are you sure?" the man asks.

Rodney stands up and walks around a little. "Don't you think they should've been back by now?" he asks, looking from one guard to the other. "I mean how long does it take to fly there and fly back, you know, I mean… I say it's a minute from eh… here to the gate eh… ten tops from their gate to the Hive ship ehm… and then twenty to get to lay a charge and, and, and like, like what… like ehm ten more to get, get back out and home, right? So…" he is totally panicking right now, the thought of being left here with them is terrifying to say the least.

The guards seem to disagree with his worries though, as they are totally composed when they tell him that they are fine.

Rodney starts to feel a bit upset and expresses that to the guards, resulting in them standing up to ensure that he doesn't go anywhere.

Dr. Weir is trying to keep herself busy so that she won't have to think about Sheppard's team all the time. She had confined herself to her office and has started recording messages for the next Earth transmission.

As soon as she is done recording, she thinks that it might be appropriate to also include a message about what happened to Sheppard and his team.

"Also at the time of this transmission… colonel Sheppard's team is still missing and is… is presumed… colonel Sheppard's team is still missing. End transmission."

She couldn't get herself to say what she was about to say. Colonel Sheppard's team might be presumed dead or captured by the enemy. The Wraith, maybe even.

She continues to stare at her computer screen waiting for any information she might receive, but her hope gets scattered more and more as the hours pass without an update.

Carson sits in his make-shift office staring at the wall. He is not on duty anymore, but he can't find himself resting while he doesn't know what's happening out there.

He sighs and stands up, walking out of his office and up to Rodney's room. He enters it and sits down on the man's bed. All around him are pictures of the good Canadian scientist and at least this way, he has a possibility to look at the man, even though he is not really there.

After hours of staring at the walls, he eventually falls asleep on Rodney's bed, a frown of worry still clear on his forehead.

To be continued.


	7. The Hive

Sorry for taking so long on writing this chapter! I finally got new batteries for my wireless keyboard, so I can continue writing now :) Hope you enjoy!

--

Rodney had been waiting for hours until Sheppard and the rest returned, but hours have passed and there is still no sign of them.

"Okay, they definitely should've been back by now." He says, clearly in panic. "Seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that things haven't been going according to plan?"

"Yes." Is the simple reply from one of the guards. They had been sitting at the table for all the time, playing some silly board game.

Rodney walks up and down the room as he tries to think of a way to make these people understand that things have most definitely gone wrong. "Okay, look, we can't just sit here. We need… we need to, we need to do something." He says, stuttering like crazy.

"Like what?" the guard asks.

"Like go get help!" Rodney replies in sarcasm as if he is talking to a little kid. "Look we can dial the Stargate back to Atlantis where we have a ship. A fast ship with shields, we can fly to the Hive and then… and then rescue them if we need to."

The guard reminds him to the fact that the gate can't be dialled without the control crystals, but Rodney knows that the guards are actually the once protecting those crystals.

He tries to get to them, but the guards block his passage, pointing really dangerous looking weapons at his face.

Rodney, still angry and panicking, backs off and goes back to pacing through the room.

After a while, he sits down, thinking it's best to wait until the two are no longer paying any attention to him.

When he thinks the guards are too busy playing their little game, he stands up and sneaks into Ford's office to go look for the crystals.

He walks up to the closet containing the Wraith enzyme and looks through the window.

"Okay…" he says to himself. "You can take them out. It's easy, just a few well placed karate chops and, and, and… and down they go. Piece of cake. Lets ehm…" he exerts his hand towards the doorknob of the closet and wants to open it. "What are you, an idiot?" he asks himself as he realises what he's about to do. He wants to walk back to the room with the guards, but he thinks that taking the Wraith enzyme might even be less dangerous.

He walks back to the closet, staring inside once more. "Desperate times, desperate measures." He tells himself. He finally opens the closet and wants to pull out a small bottle of enzyme, but instead he grabs a big bottle of it and injects it into his body.

"Lock and load." He says, walking over to the desk as he tries to remember why he took the enzyme in the first place. He walks back into the cave where the two guards were still playing their little game. He grabs the first one by the neck and throws him around the room, feeling the strength coursing through his body. The other guard gets up on his feet, but Rodney is quick to take him out as well. He smacks him in the face, but as the man is still standing, he grabs a bottle and smashes it on the man's head. It doesn't seem to bother him too much though as he merely staggers a little and prepares to strike a blow at him. 'What are these men? Invincible?' he asks himself and he quickly punches the man in his face again, which causes him to fly backwards and land on top of a table. He falls and doesn't stand up.

"And that's what you get when you drive a brilliant scientist into a corner!" he shouts. Then he turns around, feeling a fist in his face. The other guard had gotten back on his feet and was trying to fight him. He feels the man's hand around his neck and he tries to scratch the man's face, without any luck, but the man lets go anyway and Rodney sees his chance. He kicks the man in his stomach with all the strength he can muster and the man stays down.

Again, Rodney turns around, wondering what he should do now. He wonders why it's so difficult to think, but then he remembers that he has just taken an insane amount of the enzyme. "Eh, focus… focus." He tells himself and he walks up to a desk. He opens a drawer but doesn't find what he needs, so he goes on to the next one, finding shiny things but he can't remember what they were again. "Control crystals!" he finally says when he remembers and he takes them out of the drawer.

After that he is quick to run out of the cave, ready to never return there.

All the time he runs back to the gate, he can't get rid of the fact that he just took way too much of the enzyme.

"Big dose, big, big dose!" he tells himself while he is rearranging the control crystals. "But you needed it." He continues to talk to himself because that's what he does whenever he is nervous, talk… or eat, depends on the situation.

Once the control crystals are back on place, he dials Atlantis, hoping that he remembered the address correctly. Once the gate is activated, he looks at it with great relief. "Okay, go home." He says in a panicking way.

Once he is through on the other side, the first thing he says is: "I know what I need to do!"

Of course, everyone on the base already knows about the situation. At least, in his mind they do.

"Rodney? What's happened, where's the rest?" Dr. Weir asks as she walks up to the gate.

Rodney is rather much surprised to hear her talking like that. Surely she knows what's going on, he knows, so why wouldn't she? "There's no time, no time." He says. "Now Ford's the one, he ehm… ships heading towards them they ehm… we don't have much time… I barely managed to escape myself but I managed to take out the guards. Oh you should've seen me, I was amazing. I wish I would've caught it on camera because… that's not the point." All the time he is talking, explaining the entire situation to her in his head, but to his annoyance, Dr. Weir doesn't seem to understand him at all. "Rodney, slow down." She says, willing him to take it easy with a threatening finger, but to Rodney's liking, he's already talking too slowly.

"Are you alright?" she then asks.

"Yes, yes, I mean ehm… eheheh, I dunno. I mean, I did take out the guards and they were huge and dumb and stupid and…" Rodney continues to walk in circles, unable to stand still for very long.

"What guards?" Dr. Weir asks, becoming slightly worried now.

Whose guards do you think? Rodney wonders, surely he explained it by now? "Ford's guards, didn't I mention Ford?" he asks to be sure.

"No, you didn't. And you haven't mentioned Sheppard, Teyla or Ronon either." Dr. Weir insists, willing some information out of the obviously crazy man.

Rodney points a finger at her. "Yes! They were there too. And there was the two guards, they were huge and massive and I had to take them out so I had to inject some of the enzyme." He explains, becoming more and more annoyed by the fact that Dr. Weir doesn't seem to understand a word of what he is saying even though he is speaking in very clear sentences.

"You took some of the enzyme?" Dr. Weir asks, now positively alarmed.

Rodney shakes his head. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't take some of the enzyme, I took a lot of the enzyme because I had to I had to take out the guards and which I did. And you should've seen me, I was amazing!" he says, completely in euphoria about what had happened and what he had done. All he really wants is some recognition.

"Are you insane?" Dr. Weir asks, knowing how dangerous it is.

Rodney stares at the floor and nods frantically. "Yes, yes, now that I've taken the enzyme, yes." There is a completely horrified look on his face as he looks at Dr. Weir.

"Rodney, focus. Where is colonel Sheppard?" she now asks again.

Rodney looks around, wondering why no one understands what he's trying to say. "No, no, no, I had to take the enzyme because I had to take out the guards. But that's not the point, we don't have enough time. We just need to we need to stop the ship by getting to know where the ship is going." He walks up to the gate, but Dr. Weir takes him by the arm and turns him around. "Come on, lets take a walk to the infirmary." She says, but Rodney doesn't seem to agree.

"Wow, wow, wow, where are we going? No, no, no, no, what are you doing? No, no, no, no, no, I don't want to go to the infirmary, I wanna, I wanna go to the… the ehm… eh…" he starts seeing a little cross-eyed and he's swaying on his legs, yet he needs to make Dr. Weir understand what has happened, so he tries to keep talking. Then he suddenly faints.

Dr. Weir pushes the button on her radio and nearly shouts: "Dr. Beckett, we have an emergency, we're headed to you."

Carson was on standby when they brought Rodney in and he felt his heart plummeting. Something had gone wrong, he had felt it in his heart for quite some time already.

"Wha' happened?" he asks Dr. Weir as she walks in after the marines that carried Rodney.

Dr. Weir shakes her head. "They were captured, apparently by Ford… he took a big dose of the Wraith enzyme in order to escape, that's all I know." She says.

Carson swallows hard and looks at Rodney who is now placed carefully on a bed.

"I'd better take a look at him." He says in his most professional manner. His heart is racing and he feels a terrible fear in his heart.

He walks over to the Canadian and checks his pupils and pulse. There is a lot to be worried about, he took so much of the enzyme and he doesn't know if the man will survive.

He starts doing tests on the man as Dr. Weir leaves the infirmary. "Keep me posted." She says and Carson nods, his mind entirely dedicated to the man in front of him.

'He can't die…' Carson thinks. 'Please don't let him die.' He feels the almost unbearable urge to cry and snaps at a nurse who is trying to help him. The nurse doesn't seem to mind though, she knows about the relationship between the two men and so she knows what the Scottish doctor is going through at the moment. She merely steps back to let the man do his job.

At some point, Rodney wakes up. He immediately starts talking about a lot of things, but Carson doesn't understand a word of it. He knows Rodney is trying to tell him about Ford and Sheppard's team, but the words are a complete mangle.

After a few hours of work, Carson finds out that the dose Rodney took was so immense that the man is now suffering from immense withdrawal symptoms. At this point, Dr. Weir and colonel Caldwell walk in.

"Colonel Caldwell." Carson says in surprise, he hadn't expected the Deadalus colonel to be there. "I didn't think you'd be due back for days."

Caldwell nods. "Dr. Weir requested that we'd join the search ASAP so we pushed the engines a little." He says in his military voice although he doesn't really sound as cold as normally.

"How is he?" Dr. Weir asks, pointing her head in Rodney's direction, her voice warm and concerned.

Carson blinks his eyes a couple of times as if he doesn't want to remember the state the man is in at the moment. With a heavy sigh he says: "I've sedated him. I've administered a beta-blocker that would bring his blood pressure down to a manageable level. It's a wonder he didn't suffer a stroke." He doesn't dare to look into Dr. Weir's eyes, thinking that he'd see a lot of compassion in there, something he can't really use right now.

"Did he mention anything further about the location of colonel Sheppard and his team?" Caldwell now asks.

Carson looks somewhat guilty, sure, Rodney said something, but he didn't have the first clue what it was all about. "Nothing coherent I'm afraid. By the time he arrived here he was hyperventilating, pulse extremely rapid. He barely got out a word. Although being Rodney, he certainly tried." He says, looking back over his shoulder and turning back to face the two in front of him, grinning a little.

Dr. Weir grins a little as well and shakes her head. "How much of the enzyme did he take?" she asks.

"A very big dose I'm afraid. I found a magnificent amount of it in his system. Nearly as much as lieutenant Ford." Carson replies, it pains him to say this because he knows how Ford ended up. He can see that Dr. Weir is also quite shocked as she looks passed him to see Rodney. She sighs and asks: "Alright, can you wean him off it?"

Carson shakes his head. "I wish I could." He says with a sigh. "Unfortunately, lieutenant Ford took the last of the enzyme with him when he left Atlantis." Dr. Weir nods, understanding the situation Carson is in. Carson continues talking. "So an incremental withdrawal is out of the question."

Caldwell looks at Rodney as well. "Unless we harvest more enzyme." He then says.

Carson shakes his head, he had thought about that as well, but at this point, it just isn't possible. That's why he says: "Not an option. By the time we go out and collect it, the enzyme

would've broken down in the system already. No, I'm afraid for Rodney, the only choice is…"

"Cold turkey." Caldwell finishes the sentence. Carson nods. "Aye, to put it bluntly." He agrees. "I can administer some drugs to help ease the process; anti-nausea medication, pain relievers enzodeasophin for anxiety as well as a multi-vitamin injection to bulge up the immune system." He sums up.

"Good." Dr. Weir replies, but Carson had not yet finished talking. "But there's no dodging the fact that it's gonna be difficult… possibly even deadly." At the moment he says this, he feels his heart taking a jump up to his throat and he needs to take a deep breath. He will do whatever it takes to keep the man alive, even if it costs him his own.

He looks around to see Rodney writhing in agony over on the bed. He would do anything to be there in his place right now, but all he can do is try to make him better. He finds some comfort in the fact that he's there with him throughout the process.

Caldwell and Dr. Weir leave again after having received a promise from Carson that he'll still keep them informed.

Carson walks back over to the bed to sit by Rodney's side. He had already given the man the sedatives he spoke about, else Rodney probably wouldn't be lying here anymore.

"Hang in there, Rodney… don't leave me, you hear?" he whispers softly, grasping the man's hand and immediately regretting it. The enzyme in Rodney's body has made him considerably stronger and he is crunching his hand quite a bit.

After a while he dozes off a little, still sitting besides Rodney, a worried frown on his forehead.

He is woken up by a scream and some body parts flapping wildly around him.

He immediately jumps to his feet, holding Rodney steady until he calms down again. Then he lets go and Rodney opens his eyes as well.

"How are ye doing, Rodney?" Carson asks, more to start a conversation than to actually check up on him. He knows how Rodney is doing, he's feeling miserable and is in a lot of pain. Rodney doesn't answer. "It's just a little longer, love, ye'll be free of it soon enough." Carson continues, needing to have a conversation with the man.

"No…" Rodney says, feeling terrified although he doesn't know why. He just feels himself weakening, he needs another dose. "You don't understand…" he huffs out. "I need more enzyme."

Carson grabs for a few more sedatives and tries to remain calm as he says: "We don't have any." He looks saddened by the fact.

"The cave…" Rodney says desperately. "Ford's cave, he's got a, a whole cabin of it. There's, there's dozens of vials."

Carson bends over the man, an ever so slight glimpse of hope in his eyes. "Do ye know the address?" he asks.

Rodney wonders what the man is talking about and then remembers that he came through the Stargate. Obviously, he can't remember a thing of it and he falls back on his pillow, devastated. "No…" he says in a high voice.

Carson sighs as well, he had hoped so much for this to had happened, but it's not that strange that Rodney can't remember, if he even knew it in the first place. "I'm sorry, Rodney…" he says in a compassionate voice and he turns around for a moment.

"Oh don't you scream at me." Rodney yells.

Carson handles the injection lines on Rodney's body some more. "I'm not screaming." He says calmly. His heart feels like it's about to blow right out of his chest with the pain he is currently feeling, but he can only imagine what Rodney is going through right now.

"Oh this is fun for you, isn't it? Watching me like this?" Rodney continues to yell, completely losing himself in anxiety.

Carson injects some more anti-anxiety drug while he says: "I assure ye, it's not." Still remaining as calm as possible.

Rodney doesn't wish to believe this. "What is this? Payback of jealousy? Huh? Jealous of how… vital I am to this mission. Vital, vital… Jealous of how I get to go off-world while you get stuck in this stupid, pathetic excuse for a hospital." He screams, not knowing exactly what he is saying at this point.

Carson looks him in the eye again. "Ye know tha's not true." He says softly. He was hurt because of this. Of course, Rodney seems to think of this whole medicine thing as voodoo and he doesn't have all too much trust in it, but then again, he doesn't really have to say it like that, it really hurts.

"Jealous because I get all the women and you don't?" Rodney says in a high voice and Carson frowns at this, unsure whether or not he should laugh at this. Rodney has clearly forgotten about them for a moment. "Excuse me?" he asks. Even if they weren't involved with each other in this way, the thought of Rodney getting more women than him is actually quite hilarious.

"Please, just give me a little bit of the enzyme, just enough to keep me edged off, I'm dying here." Rodney cries out.

Carson cocks his eyebrows and repeats what he had said before. "I told ye we don' have any."

Rodney replies in a really fast way. "Well don't you think I know you are lying?" he asks.

"I'm not lying." Carson replies, his patience somewhat fading, but he manages to keep his act together.

"Oh and you don't think I don't think you are but you are." He says, not making any sense at all. "And don't think I will forget it…" at that point he remembers something. Something he had promised himself never to forget again. He and Carson were together, they were lovers. Why is he treating him like that? Carson should be doing everything he can to safe him!

"Forget wha'?" Carson wants to know.

Rodney lets his head drop back on the pillow. "Oh I don't know… just kill me…" he says, crying.

Carson turns around for a second. "I wish I…" he whispers. "Help us." He then says, once again trying to remain as calm as possible.

"Don't shout at me, I am right here!" Rodney shouts again.

Carson turns to the nurses again. "Perhaps we should move him to a more secluded area."

"What, so you can kill me in private? Stab another knife in my back huh?" Rodney shouts, trying to push himself up on the pillow. Why is Carson treating him this way? Why is he trying to hurt him?

Carson puts a reassuring hand on the man's chest, glad to see that he allows this, glad at the mere feeling of his body underneath his hand and his still beating heart.

"Rodney, no one's trying to kill ye." He says in a hopefully reassuring way.

Rodney's breathing is shallow and he closes his eyes in pain. "You have no idea… of the… agony I'm going through…" he huffs out, staring right into Carson's eyes. Maybe if he can get it clear to him, maybe then he will understand him.

Carson stares right back into the man's eyes, putting up a sad, lopsided grin. "Oh… I have an inkling." He says. He had gone through this whole experience once with Ford already, he knows how to handle these kind of thing. Not to mention, one of hiss earlier childhood friends once got drugged against his will and went through the same thing. He thinks he knows the drill right about now.

To his mild surprise, Rodney starts crying, grabbing the his hand while doing so.

Carson stays by his side, holding his hand and pushing it gently to let him know that he's not going anywhere.

Time slowly goes by while Rodney lies there, writhing in agony and sadly enough, feeling quite sick as he keeps throwing up. Finally, after what seems like ages, Rodney calms down a little. Carson stands up to check on his vitals, to see if things have changed for the good.

After that, he takes a seat on the other side of the bed, putting his hands under his chin to stare at the man who had fallen asleep while he was away.

At that point, Dr. Weir enters the infirmary again. "How is he?" she asks, her voice slightly strained with nerves.

Carson looks around, he hadn't even heard her coming in. He sighs. "Asleep… finally… mercifully." He says, suddenly feeling how tired he is. Dr. Weir laughs a little at this and she shakes her head. "Has he mentioned anything about Sheppard and the others?" she now wishes to know.

"No no' yet…" Carson replies. "Our conversation was of a different sort…" he grins a little, feeling rather uneasy saying this. He stares at the ceiling while he says: "I feel no' unlike the priest in the Exorcist." He looks at Dr. Weir with a played horrid expression and Dr. Weir smiles a little at this. When Carson looks around again, there's a smile on his face as well. He stares at Rodney some more. "Well he's through the worst of it. The nausea has passed, his pulse has returned to normal… blood pressure back to a more reasonable range considering his borderline hypertension before taking the enzyme."

"Good…" Dr. Weir says in a soft voice.

Carson looks around once more, stealing a glance at his sleeping lover. "I hate to say it, but stubbornness is probably what sustained him throughout the ordeal." He jokes, looking at Dr. Weir once more to see that she's laughing again. "We won't tell him that though." She replies, playing the joke back at Carson.

Carson squints his eyes and puts up a worried frown. "Aye, mustn't feed the beast." He says.

"No…" Dr. Weir replies, grinning a bit. After that she looks at Carson, looking a bit more worried now. "You should get some rest." She says. "You look exhausted."

Carson takes another deep sigh. It is true that he feels on the bridge of collapsing, but he doesn't feel like leaving Rodney any time soon. "I'll stay with him just a wee bit longer." He decides to say. "Just to make sure he's out of the woods." He doesn't wish for him to die, not now, not ever, not as long as he can prevent it.

Dr. Weir nods at him, agreeing to this. She wants to walk away, but changes her mind. "Carson," she says. "Nice work."

Carson stares at the floor while receiving the compliment, smiling a little, feeling shy to acknowledge the compliment, but then he says: "Thanks Elizabeth."

Dr. Weir smiles at him and walks out of the infirmary.

Even though Carson had promised Dr. Weir to go to bed after a while, he finds himself waking up next to Rodney's bed the next morning; his back soar and neck popping as he looks up. Rodney is staring back at him, his eyes back to normal and not showing any sign of pain.

"Good morning." Rodney says to him, smiling a little.

Carson immediately sits up straight. "Good morning, how are ye feeling?" he wants to know, standing up to monitor his vitals again.

Rodney nods. "A lot better, thanks. Listen, I'm sorry about yesterday… I didn't mean what I said…" he whispers, blushing a little. Carson smiles and nods. "I know, don' worry love." He replies, stroking the man's cheek a little. Rodney closes his eyes, leaning into the touch.

"Say ehm…" Rodney then suddenly says. "You promised me a nice evening the last time we spoke before we got kidnapped. I went on the mission, you still owe me that."

Carson laughs at this, out of all the things that could be remembered, he chose to remember this. "Aye, I know. Don' worry, I didn' forget." He replies. "But first ye need to go see Elizabeth, Sheppard and the others still aren' back and I think ye've got some information tha' can help."

Rodney nods and gets out of bed, changing into his every day clothes again before going off to see Dr. Weir.

Then he walks into her office.

"Well look at you." Dr. Weir immediately says, standing up from her seat.

Rodney feels quite awkward standing there after everything that happened and is not quite capable of hiding it all that well. "Ah yes, right out of the bushy tail as the idiom goes." He says in an embarrassed way.

Dr. Weir comes to stand in front of him. "You gave us quite a scare." She says in her worried tone.

"Yeah, it's very strange…" Rodney replies, frowning a little while thinking back. "The whole time while I was under the influence of the enzyme it felt like I was ehm… I was perfectly lucid… I mean it was you who didn't make any sense or listening to reason. It's very peculiar. I think I kind of understand how Ford must be feeling this whole time."

After that he tells Dr. Weir everything he knows about what happened, from the time they were captured to the moment he escaped, about how Ford was there and how he got everyone onto the enzyme and how they left the planet to destroy a Hive ship.

He asks Dr. Weir to go on a rescue mission and she agrees to let him join the search group.

After that he goes back to find Carson again, he is still in the infirmary, cleaning up last night's mess. "I'm going out for a little bit." He tells him and Carson looks around. "Yer going to go on a mission to safe Sheppard and the team then?" he asks back.

Rodney nods. "Yes, I know almost the exact location of where they are. I should be able to track them and bring them back safely."

Carson drops the mess he was trying to clean up and he hugs the Canadian scientist. "Come back safely love." He whispers and Rodney nods, returning the hug.

Carson is left behind when Rodney leaves and he decides that this is the right time to take a little nap break. He walks up to his room, takes off his doctor's coat and falls onto his bed, not even bothering to take the rest of his clothes, or even his shoes off. He falls asleep before he even started to think about what happened that day.

On board of the Deadalus, Caldwell is making some battle strategies while Lorne and Rodney are listening. The first moment Rodney finds himself listening and disagreeing with the man, the next moment he is flying in orbit around the planet in a cloaked Puddle Jumper.

Things don't really go as planned, however, as there are now two Hive ships showing up on the radar. According to Ford, there should've been only one of them.

To make matters even worse, Sheppard doesn't respond to the radio contact Lorne is trying to establish. After a while of flying around but getting absolutely no response, they turn back to the Deadalus, thinking the team probably didn't make it.

As soon as they are back on board, Caldwell starts preparing the nukes for transport. Rodney has some doubts about this plan, he's pretty sure that this isn't going to work at all. And sure enough, the nukes can't be transported onto the Hive ship as they are jamming the signal.

Rodney is sure to let Caldwell know about this as he had already predicted this before.

Almost at thee same time, the enemy ships are engaging fire, every hit of it would've been murderous if it hadn't been for the shield. The Deadalus returns fire but is unable to take out the ships. They sustain considerable damage and are just trying to think of a plan when something really strange shows up on the screen: a Wraith dart firing at a Hive ship. Rodney immediately knows that this is the work of Sheppard, he is certain of it. The wicked leader of the team would most definitely be up to a task such as this one. He was just starting to feel happy again when he suddenly witnesses the two Hive ships exploding, taking out every Dart in the immediate area. He shakes his head in disbelief and everyone in the Deadalus grows quiet. Caldwell asks for any sign of life out there, but apparently there isn't and the Deadalus returns to Atlantis. The mood on board the ship couldn't have been more silent and sad as they make their way back. Caldwell decides it's time to contact Dr. Weir.

Back on Atlantis, Chuck has just finished relaying the message to Dr. Weir when the gate suddenly activates, showing Sheppard's IDC.

Dr. Weir orders Chuck to lower the shield and the team just comes waltzing into the gate room like nothing has happened.

Carson is woken up by this news and is summoned up to the infirmary where he needs to check up on the team.

It is dark outside when the Deadalus returns and Rodney is surprised and most startled to hear that Sheppard and his team had returned about an hour earlier and he immediately makes his way to the infirmary, most relieved to hear the news.

As soon as he walks in, he sees Carson doing the final check ups on Ronon.

"Alright, up ye go." He says as he helps Ronon into a sitting position.

"Why aren't you dead?" Rodney immediately asks, his lack of tact once again showing itself.

Sheppard turns around. "It's good to see you too, Rodney." He says in a sarcastic way.

"No, no, I mean, well… you know what I mean… why aren't you… dead?" Rodney asks again, knowing that he's saying things in a completely idiotic way but Sheppard starts to explain things about how the Wraith are very territorial beings and that the tension of a Dart shooting at a Hive ship would most probably be enough for them to start fighting at each other. He explains that he escaped the battle as soon as the two Hive ships started firing at each other.

After that they talk a little more about Ford and how it isn't sure that he is really dead this time, but after that, everyone leaves the infirmary but Rodney and Carson.

"So, love, still up for that pleasant evening?" Carson asks in a seductive way.

Rodney nods and grins. "Yes, I've been looking forward to it already." He replies. Carson nods at Dr. Cole who sits in her chair and she nods back, signalling that it's alright for them to leave. For all she knows the two men are about to do God knows what and she is only too happy to let the two of them go, as long as they don't start… doing things… while she's around. She smiles and turns back t her paperwork. The brilliance of fighting for a gay doctor.


	8. Critical Mass

So here we are for the 8th chapter of my story: Critical Mass.  
Be prepared for a long read... I got kind of carried away while writing and couldn't decide which parts to leave out so as a result... I've now got about 13 pages of text... 8876 words... (oh, a fe of them are writtin in Zelenka's language, you'll find the translation at the bottom of the story...) but anyway, I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it :)

--

Rodney had been sitting there for over half an hour, smirking with some slight arrogance that Carson had become quite used to over the passed year, but today it seems to annoy him a little

Rodney had been sitting there for over half an hour, smirking with some slight arrogance that Carson had become quite used to over the passed year, but today it seems to annoy him a little.

"Alrigh' why are ye smirking like tha'?" he can't help but ask and Rodney looks around, folding his arms as he says: "I managed to get Zelenka to go to M7G 667 and I get to stay here."

Carson does a quick thinking. "M7G 667… tha's the planet with all the kids righ'?" he asks.

Rodney nods, his smirk growing wider and even though Carson feels somewhat sorry for Zelenka, he can't help but smiling back. Rodney is terrible with children, so of course he would take any opportunity to stay back on Atlantis and help with the next earth transmission.

Rodney takes a deep breath and stands up from his chair. "Well, I'd um… better go see how he's doing, he should be about to leave by now." He says, winking at Carson.

Carson turns to look him in the eye. "Yer not going to gloat about this in front of him, are ye?" he asks, knowing that's exactly what the man's going to do. Rodney merely shrug's his shoulders, grins some more and leaves the room. Carson watches him go while shaking his head.

Rodney walks up to the control room, hearing Zelenka talking to Sheppard when he walks through the door and he quickly thinks up a story.

When he reaches the balcony, he says: "Colonel Sheppard! I need you up in the Control Room." He reaches the end up the balcony, grabbing the bars and sees Zelenka, rather sulky in front of the gate. "Oh, you still here?" he says. Mission successful, he can see from the man's face that he doesn't wish to see or speak to him right now, but he doesn't really have an option right about now.

"We're just leaving." Zelenka replies, rolling his eyes a little.

McKay acts as if he is completely interested in the man's job and says: "Hhm. Well um, do say 'hi' to the kids for me." After that he gives Zelenka a thumbs up and clicks his tongue before walking away a little, just out of sight so he can listen to Zelenka's reaction. He is more than amused to hear Zelenka muttering: "Ty vole. 'Say hi to the kids for me'. Já ti dám. Ty seš takovou vùl."

After that, he walks over to the control room where he had witnessed two Wraith cruisers on the long range scanners about a couple of hours back. He had asked Dr. Weir, Ronon and now Sheppard to come and see it for themselves. He explains that there is no immediate danger and that the cruisers are not headed their way, but are rather firing at each other. He can tell that the news is having some serious effects on the good moods of the others in the room and he feels proud of his discovery.

When the meeting is over, he goes back to his terminal to collect every data for the next earth transmission. He needs to decompress the data so that the gate doesn't have to be active too long, else the ZPM will most certainly be depleted in no time. And seeing as the next earth transmission is in little under three hours, he'd best get started.

After a while he notices that not everyone has entered their mission reports yet, including Sheppard, so he goes off to find him, knowing that the man is always late with filing reports.

He finds the man walking through town busy with nothing in particular. He asks him about his mission reports and for some reason, Sheppard is quick to evade the question, asking one for himself about Rodney's progress in getting the city alive again. Either he was sincerely interested in the subject or he needed a different topic as an excuse not to talk about his mission reports, either way, it does his job because Rodney immediately starts talking about his latest discoveries.

Suddenly they see Cadman standing in the hallway, working on a device there.

"Cadman? What are you doing here?" he asks, for some reason he keeps getting the creeps whenever she is nearby.

Cadman walks over to the two men, facing them with a sort of sarcastic look on her face. "Well, it's good to see you too, Rodney." She says.

Rodney shakes his head. "No, I thought you were leaving on the Deadalus." He says as an explanation.

"Yeah, I was, but something came up. I asked colonel Sheppard if I could stay around a little longer." Cadman explains. Rodney looks at Sheppard with a displeased look on his face and Sheppard smiles back at him. "Oh, well, that's fine." Rodney decides to say but he looks highly uncomfortable about the whole situation.

"You're OK with that?" Cadman asks, she had kind of expected the reply from the man, he always hates to admit his feelings, but she enjoys toying around with them from time to time.

"Yeah, course it is, why wouldn't it be?" Rodney asks back and he notices Cadman exchanging a sarcastic grin with Sheppard and she says: "Colonel." Then she turns to leave.

Sheppard smiles back at her and lets her pass through. "Lieutenant." He replies.

Cadman looks over her shoulder casting a long look in Rodney's direction, smiling at him and then leaving the hallway.

Rodney grimaces and he and Sheppard continue walking.

"I'd think after all this time, you'd stop being creeped out about her." Sheppard notices as a direct comment to Rodney.

Rodney takes a deep breath and says: "She just has a way of getting under my skin… Literally."

Carson is sitting in the infirmary, staring at some cells which information he had downloaded onto his laptop when Teyla walks in.

"Dr. Beckett?" she asks, feeling a little nervous. Carson doesn't look up when he says: "Yes?" he finds his voice sounding a little harsh, but he hasn't had five minutes of undisturbed work since the day started and he's starting to get a little annoyed by it.

"Do you have time to accompany me to the mainland?" Teyla asks, and now, Carson looks up, his hand still hovering mere inches away from his chin where it was leaning. "Is something wrong?" he asks. Teyla nods a little. "A woman who is very close to me, Charin?" she waits for a sign of recognition from the Scottish man's side.

After short while Carson says: "Oh yes, I remember her. Sweet lady." He continues to look at Teyla who explains the rest to him. "She is like a grandmother to me. I have just received word that she is very ill. I was wondering if you could look at her."

Carson immediately gets out of his seat and walks over to her. "Of course, love, say no more." He replies and he gets ready for the visit to the mainland.

Rodney once more took place behind his laptop, the only place where he actually feels safe aside from his bed or Carson's.

He is busy with compressing the data for the earth transmission, Sheppard had finally given him the reports he needs to finish the assembly and now the laptop is whizzing and surging to complete it's compression.

"Are we set to dial?" Dr. Weir asks and Rodney shakes his head for a second. "Almost, just finishing data compression." He replies.

Dr. Weir turns to Chuck and tells him to stand by.

It takes a little while, but then finally, all the data has been compressed and is ready to be send. "Data compression's complete. We're good to go." Rodney says in a loud and clear voice. Dr. Weir smiles and comes walking up to them. "Alright then!" she says and she turns to Chuck again. "Dial the gate." She tells him.

"Yes ma'am." Chuck replies and he starts pushing the symbols in Earth's address order.

Once Chuck has reached the fifth coordinate, Rodney receives an incoming transmission from the Deadalus and he immediately starts reading it. 'Do not dial gate to Earth. A Trust operative has planted a bomb in Atlantis to be detonated upon dialing sequence.'

"STOP!" he immediately shouts, even before his brains register what is going on exactly. Chuck's fingers come to a halt right above the seventh symbol, shaking in fear.

Rodney stares at him a little longer before sagging back into his chair and breathing a sigh of relief.

He explains to them all why he told Chuck to stop and can see from the startled looks on their faces that they feel the same way he does: not really all too pleased and actually rather frightened.

For some reason, he figures that he won't be getting the rest he so desperately wanted.

A little while later, he finds himself walking up to Dr. Weir's office along with Sheppard, Ronon and Dr. Weir. As always, he does the talking while the others listen.

It's so typical, whenever the city is in an emergency, they turn to him and to be honest, he likes it a lot. He would never admit that though, he likes to complain too much.

"We need to disconnect the ZedPM and switch to back-up Naquadah generators to prevent any possible dialing of the Gate to earth." He says in an authority voice.

Dr. Weir agrees with him and Rodney chuckles when Sheppard mentions Zelenka being stuck on M7G 667. Although some part of his brain silently wishes he'd be there himself this time.

They decide that teams should search the city in order to find the bomb and Sheppard decides it's time to say something when Rodney suggests that he should be checking the primary and secondary systems for any presence of a explosive device. "Get Cadman to assist you, she's an bomb expert." He says, knowing that this will get Rodney really pissed off. As thought, Rodney turns to him with a mixture of disgust and shock on his face. "She is?" he asks, not really looking forward to working alongside of Cadman.

Sheppard nods. "She's one of the best. She'll be a big help." He says in an amused tone.

Rodney grimaces and when Dr. Weir agrees on this he knows that there'll be no way of getting out of this.

He stands up and murmurs something about disconnecting the ZedPM now while Dr. Weir makes preparations for the Deadalus to return to Atlantis.

He walks over to the ZPM room and attaches the Naquadah generators to the power system. Then he makes the necessary adjustments to the system and taps his radio to speak to Dr. Weir. "I have made the adjustments and I'm ready to disconnect. He says.

"Alright, Rodney, do what you have to do." Dr. Weir replies.

Rodney nods and sighs a little, feeling nervous about having to do this. If those Wraith cruisers decide to make a detour to Atlantis, their only defense against them will be gone. But he figures he doesn't have much of a choice.

"Disconnecting ZedPM power… now." He says and the pushes a button which allows the lights within the ZPM to go out. He watches it a little longer, having a really bad feeling about this, but then he turns to leave and find Carson.

When he can't find him, he walks over to the nurse nearest the infirmary and asks her where he went.

"He went to the mainland with Teyla, one of her people has fallen ill." She explains and Rodney nods. 'That's good.' He thinks. 'That way he won't be in any danger if Atlantis gets destroyed.'

On the mainland, Carson is stalling out a few medical tools while he's talking to the old lady named Charin. She lies on a bed in her tent on the mainland, weakened and tired.

"Charin, if you don' mind, I'd like to draw a wee bit of your blood." He says.

Charin nods and turns her arm around. "If you must." She says in a weak voice and Teyla starts rolling up her sleeve.

"When you are done, I have made some Tuttleroot soup." Teyla says with a caring smile on her face.

This makes Charin laugh a little and Teyla stands up to get some soup. "You, cooking?" Charin says in a kind voice. Carson, however, doesn't really know what Tuttleroot soup is. "Tuttleroot?" he asks as Teyla grabs a small bowl and a spoon. He draws some of Charin's blood while listening to Teyla whom is still talking to Charin. "Yes, I have been practicing." She admits. "Hopefully, some day, I will be able to cook as well as you."

Carson smiles a little at this and pulls the needle out of Charin's arm again, watching as Teyla feeds her the soup.

"Oh…" Charin says and she starts to laugh in a rather affectionate way. "I'm afraid that day is far into the future, my dear."

Carson can't help but grin a little at this while Teyla looks a little hurt, but when she notices that everyone around her is laughing in a friendly way about this, she puts up a rueful smile.

Charin tells her that she wasn't meant for just cooking and being a housewife so to speak, that she was meant to be the leader of the Athosians. Then Carson's attention is once more drawn as Charin mentions something about a Ring Ceremony.

"Forgive me, but wha' exactly is the Ring Ceremony?" he can't help but ask.

He watches as Teyla hesitates, but Charin nods and Teyla starts explaining that, among their people, it is very rare for someone to die of natural causes, because of the Wraith. The Ring Ceremony is held for people who died of natural cause, to celebrate that they lived without being culled. She explains how the ceremony is being held; that they build a ring out of stones, resembling the Stargate and that they place the body in the middle, but after that, she doesn't wish to continue talking because it's too painful for her.

"I am not ready for this Ceremony, Charin. Not yet." She says emotionally.

Carson turns around, not wishing to disturb the two women as Charin reaches out for Teyla's cheek and strokes it softly.

Back on Atlantis, Rodney is stuck working with Cadman behind one of the many terminals in the city. "Explosives expert, eh?" he asks her.

"High temperature and energetic materials technology. And I can tap dance too." She adds in a pleasant voice, looking at Rodney as if she tries to get a reaction out of him.

Rodney roles his eyes, making Cadman smile in victory.

He can't stand being around her. Not so much because she got stuck in his head, although that is one of the main reasons, but also because of what happened when she first found out that he and Carson were dating. As if she is reading his mind, she asks: "So how are you and Carson doing?" Rodney looks up from his terminal to look at her. "Why are you interested?" he wants to know.

Cadman smiles a little. "Aren't friends allowed to care?" she asks back and Rodney cocks an eyebrow. "You consider us friends now" he asks and Cadman shakes her head, putting up a sorry grin. "Not you, you ass, but Carson and I are still friends and I would really much appreciate it if you'd be nice to him." Cadman says, once again carrying that pleasant tone. "Or else what?" Rodney asks back. "Remember that we have a truce."

Cadman nods. "I remember, Rodney." She says and in some way, these words make the hairs on Rodney's neck rise.

Suddenly, they hear sounds coming from behind them and Chuck tells them that the DHD suddenly started dialing by itself.

Rodney gets off his seat and walks over to the DHD noticing that it's earth's address that's being dialed. For one moment, he is very happy to know that the disconnected ZPM actually did his job because once the seventh chevron is activated, the gate turns off again and everything goes back to normal. Once again, he breaths a sigh of relief.

"Rodney?" Cadman suddenly says. "What?" Rodney replies, looking at Cadman. "The transmitter." She says, pointing her head in the direction of the sensors.

Rodney walks over to the screen on the wall. "Oh no." he says in a panicky voice.

"What is it?" Dr. Weir asks, walking over to the panel herself.

"We just started broadcasting a distress signal. The gate dialed itself in order to draw our attention away from the transmitter." Rodney explains and he starts working on turning it off. Once he's done, he checks the long-range scanners, seeing his biggest fear becoming reality: the two Wraith cruisers had stopped their fighting activities and are now headed straight to Atlantis.

He doesn't really quite understand why the bomb-man did this in the first place, two Wraith cruisers, why would he or she be so pleased to see them destroyed while there are a dozen or so hive ships in the galaxy? He turns around to face the screen on the wall again, sighing heavily. He'll have to figure it out sooner or later or else the city will be destroyed.

Meanwhile, Teyla and Carson have returned to Atlantis, Carson went straight to the infirmary to check Charin's test results. When he hears the news about the Wraith cruisers, he is not really all that pleased, but he has more stressing matters to attend to at the moment, his own work here on Atlantis: making sure that Charin lives.

It takes a little time and the sun has already set, but then he has finally got all the results he needs and he goes up to find Teyla to tell her the good news.

He finds her as she walks through the hallways, seemingly hasty. He takes a slight sprint in order too catch up with her. "Teyla. Ye'r in an awful hurry." He says when he's finally right behind her.

Teyla looks around. "I am returning to the mainland. We are evacuating my people back to the city." She explains and Carson nods. "Oh yes, the Wraith are on the way, I just heard." He replies.

"They will be protected under the cloak until the danger has passed." Teyla says in a confident voice. It's the voice she always carries, even if she is uncertain of the situation, Carson knows that this is the burden she has to carry in order to lead her people.

"Unfortunately, if they don' find that bomb, Atlantis may prove even more dangerous." He says in a dark voice, he's a bit worried about that.

Teyla nods but her determination doesn't diminish. "They will find it, I am certain." She says.

Carson stops walking. "Before ye go, I need to talk to ye about Charin. I've completed my tests and I must say although she is old and her body is indeed failing her, there are treatments and procedures I can administer to prolong her life." He tells her, a bit of good news can never hurt in a situation like this.

Teyla stops walking as well and turns around. "Really?" she asks, there is now true hope in her voice.

Carson nods and starts explaining. "Aye, startin' with a pacemaker for her heart." He says but Teyla of course has no idea what a pacemaker is, so Carson continues. "Ye see, one of the reasons why she's feeling so weak is tha' her heart is beating in an… untimely fashion, not pumping nearly enough blood through her body. Now, the condition will continue, but the pacemaker will slow the progress considerably. It could possibly add years to her life."

This makes Teyla smile in a more than honest way, simply delighted to hear this news. "I will let her know. But first I have to get her and my people to safety before the Wraith arrive." She says, sounding brighter already.

"Of course." Carson says, understanding as ever and he watches as Teyla walks away.

As he stands there watching her retreating back, he feels a bit guilty. She is always this strong while he is always this scared. Even now, the Wraith are on their way and there might be a Goa'uld in their midst, it scares the crap out of him. His hand absent-mindedly crosses his forehead and neck as if to feel the presence of a Goa'uld inside himself.

'This can not be happening!' Rodney thinks when he's finished analyzing the data he was studying. He calls back Dr. Weir over the radio. She was just busy interrogating the crew of the Deadalus as they suspect that one of them might be a Trust operative. She immediately goes to the control room to see what's happened.

"What have you found?" she asks when she sees Sheppard and Rodney.

Sheppard is the one that starts talking. "Guess what? Turns out there's no bomb after all." He says, but Rodney disagrees with him. "Uhh, there's no actual explosive device. The explosion will come, but eh, from somewhere else." He starts explaining and he's almost pleased to see the confused look on Dr. Weir's face and he taps one of the button's on Chuck's Ancient terminal. "Now, with the Wraith on the way we need to cloak the city, right?" he asks.

"Yes." Is Dr. Weir's answer, that much is certain already.

He goes on to explain how they need to reconnect the ZPM in order to do this and that it will not effect the Stargate as he has manually disabled the DHD.

He says that the problem is the ZPM itself because it controls massive amounts of power, like a dam, as Sheppard said. He tries to explain to Dr. Weir that, in order to keep the ZPM functional, the Ancients had put in place a failsafe so that the 'dam' wouldn't break.

Then he finally starts explaining why there is no actual explosive device in the city: The Trust operative had rewritten the operating system and disabled to fail safe's, but in such a way that the city's sensors didn't detect it.

At this point, Dr. Weir finally starts to understand what's going on. "So the dialing of earth would cause the ZPM to overload?" she asks.

"Oh, yeah!" Rodney says in a matter of fact way of speaking. "And given that dialling another galaxy requires tremendous amounts of power, we're talking catastrophic overload. I mean, the explosion would destroy not just the city, but, uh, most likely the entire planet."

Sheppard, who had been standing behind Dr. Weir now asks: "Can the fail-safes be re-enabled?"

"Yes, but, uh, whoever it was who did this anticipated the possibility that it would be discovered and they put in place a code to block access to it." Rodney replies, animating the whole happening with his hands a little.

"And I'm gonna guess that cracking this code isn't gonna be easy." Cadman says, she's still sitting behind a terminal, not really mixing into the conversation all that much, highly unlike her.

Rodney looks at her, annoyed even by her presence. "No, not at all. It is extremely complicated." He says in his sarcastic voice.

When Dr. Weir starts talking, she sounds a little stressed and confused. "But for now you've already disabled the DHD so it's impossible to dial Earth." She says, not really grasping the entire situation yet.

"Yeah, but unfortunately, any number of systems can be used in conjunction with each other to, uh, overload the ZedPM. It'd be a much more gradual build-up than dialling the Gate, which would cause an instantaneous power spike, but, um, equally as effective in its results." Rodney explains, not sure if he is just this smart or that other people around him are just too stupid to understand what he's trying to say.

Dr. Weir nods, coming to realize just how dangerous the situation in Atlantis is at the moment. "And we can't disconnect the ZPM because we need the cloak for when the Wraith cruisers arrive." She says softly.

Rodney points a finger at her, greatly relieved that she's finally grasped on to the situation. "Bingo! Which is why our bomber activated the distress beacon, alerting them. And that is how the Wraith coming to Atlantis is connected to detonating the bomb." He says and while he sounds like he's just talking about the weather, his heart is racing ten times normal speed and he feels like he's about to faint.

All the Athosians have been evacuated to the city and Charin lies in the infirmary under Dr. Beckett's care.  
Teyla comes waltzing in to the infirmary, clearly not pleased about this. "Dr. Beckett. Why was Charin moved in here?" she asks.  
Carson was just busy rounding up some medication for her when he hears her question, he turns around to face her, knowing that Charin does not wish to be helped.  
Charin actually wished to die, she is old and welcomes death as an old friend, she does not appear to fear death like most people do. "So I can keep a closer eye on her, tend her if needed." He decides to answer. He walks away with the medication and Teyla follows him. "I told you she does not wish for any treatment." She replies and Carson looks around.  
"Ye have to understand, Teyla, that as a doctor I can't just stand by here and let her die. I took an oath to preserve life." He says in a silent way.  
Teyla however, doesn't seem all too convinced, she knows Charin's wishes and doesn't tend to let go of those. "You may keep her here to make her comfortable, but if the time comes, as much as it pains both of us, we must not interfere." She says, her voice makes it clear that she doesn't want any retorts from Carson.  
Carson looks around to see Charin, lying weakly on the bed. "Aright…" he says reluctantly.

"Still working on cracking the new failsafe code but uh, so far, no luck." Rodney says. He, Sheppard, Dr. Weir, Ronon and Caldwell are sitting in the briefing room the evaluate the situation at hand.  
Caldwell turns to Dr. Weir and asks: "How are things coming with Kavanagh? Is he still your prime suspect?"  
Dr. Weir nods and stares at the ground. "Yes, he is." She admits. "I'm having some difficulty with him though. He's not exactly the most co-operative of people."  
"Well there's a shocker." Rodney immediately says, the fact of Kavanagh being the prime suspect actually makes him laugh a little bit. He hates the man and doesn't even try to conceal it.  
"If he does know the code, I highly doubt he's gonna give it to us." Dr. Weir continues as if she hadn't even listened to what Rodney had said. In fact, it didn't contribute one thing to the conversation, so it's not really all that strange that he's being ignored.  
Ronon, who had been sitting just outside the briefing room, now walks inside, taking the knife out of a sheath and flips it nonchalantly. "Give me ten minutes with him. I'll get it out of him." He says in a certain way.  
Rodney stares at the table and shakes his head with a grimace. He's not entirely sure if he hates Kavanagh enough to expose him to Ronon's reckless aggression.  
"It might not be a bad idea." Sheppard says and everyone looks at him. "Maybe it is time to take this interrogation to the next level."  
Rodney feels that it is time to step in on this conversation. "Look, hate Kavanagh as much as the next guy – probably even more – but um, we really need to be sure about this."  
Dr. Weir nods again. "I agree. If there's even the slightest chance that he's innocent then…" she gets interrupted by Caldwell. "We don't have time to debate morality. Unfortunately sometimes you have to do unpleasant things in order to safe lives."  
Rodney shakes his head, not feeling at all comfortable about this, but Sheppard nods and the vote of the military seems to count higher than the vote of a scientist at this point. He stands up and decides it's time to resume his work.  
When he walks in to the control room, he finds Cadman working behind a laptop, this is not what they had agreed on. "What are you doing?" he asks her.  
Cadman looks around at Rodney. "I was going over the system command logs over the past few months." She explains, knowing that Rodney will throw a fit at her for it, but not really caring about it. Rodney folds his arms. "Why?" he asks in an almost angry way.  
Cadman had turned back to the screen and continues to search for something. "I noticed a gap in one of the data stream sequences from several weeks ago." Rodney looks exasperated. "It's probably nothing, but I thought it might indicate a…" that's how far she gets before Rodney steps in and finishes the sentence for her. "A deletion point, yes. Believe it or not, I have had some experience with these systems; more say, than a tap-dancing explosives expert."  
Cadman looks around in annoyance. "I was just trying to help, Rodney." She points out.  
"Hey here's a thought: failsafe code, why don't you help with that?" Rodney immediately cuts over her.  
Cadman is about to retort when Rodney suddenly starts to look horrified and walks over to the screen on the wall. He taps his headset and calls for Dr. Weir. "Elizabeth." He says in an urgent voice.  
"Yes Rodney?" the reply comes from over the radio.  
"The cruisers are getting closer. I think it's time to reconnect the ZedPM and cloak the city." He says, not really feeling all to optimistic about it.  
"Go ahead." Dr. Weir's reply sounds and the radio contact is broken.  
Rodney walks out of the control room without even looking at Cadman who decides to continue what she was doing.  
He walks into the ZPM room and disconnects the Naquadah generators, making him stand in the dark while working. He locates the ZPM safely locked away in it's crate and picks it up.  
He is careful to put the ZPM in the right place, even though the thing is about to overload, he can't have it happening before the cruisers have found out that the city is still gone. Once it's safely locked into place, he walks over to a control panel and pushes a few buttons. "Switching to ZedPM power now." He says over the radio. His heart is beating in a way-too-fast rate and he feels very dizzy all of a sudden. Bad feelings are part of his work, in his opinion, but this is a real danger, not just a feeling and it frightens the crap out of him.  
After that he quickly runs back to the control room to see what's going on.  
He takes place behind a laptop and starts shutting down secondary system all over the city, closely monitoring the ZPM overload program.  
"How are we doing?" a familiar voice suddenly asks and Rodney looks around for a brief moment to see Dr. Weir walking into the control room.  
"Well, I've powered down several of the secondary systems but, uh, s far, ZedPM levels are holding below overload. Heh, I think we're going to be OK." Rodney replies in mild surprise and great relief.

Carson stands across the bed from Teyla as he notices that Charin is doing worse. It pains him to the depths of his heart that he isn't allowed to help her in any way, but he has promised Teyla not to interfere so he has to honour those wishes.  
Charin is struggling to take breaths and Teyla is talking to her. "Are you in pain? Dr. Beckett can give you something to ease it." She says, leaning over the bed a little to make Charin see her. Charin slowly turns around to look at Teyla as she tries to speak. "Teyla…" she says weakly. "Yes, Charin?" Teyla replies, smiling down at her a little.  
"Our journey begins…" Charin now says, her voice even weaker and she smiles up at Teyla, drawing one last painful breath before dying.  
Carson softly sighs and quietly walks over to the heart monitor, shutting the machine down so that he doesn't have to listen to the paining sound of the flat line anymore. He walks away in a discrete way so not to disturb Teyla in this emotional moment.  
Somewhere deep in his heart, he feels that this is just the beginning, that the fate that overcame Charin will be in store for all of them, but he decides that this is not the right moment to think about this.

"They're here." Rodney says in a sing-song voice, he's sitting on a chair in the control room while looking at the long range scanner screen with Dr. Weir. "Two Wraith cruisers, just outside out atmosphere."  
Dr. Weir looks closely at the screen as well. "So far they don't behave in a way that would indicate that they're aware of us." She notices.  
"Rodney?" Cadman suddenly says and Rodney is annoyed when he turns around, surely anything else than the two Wraith cruisers can wait right now, but then he suddenly realises that there's a beeping alarm in the background. "What?" he asks.  
"The city's inertial dampeners just began powering up." Cadman tells him.  
Rodney jumps off his seat. "What?!" he shouts, quickly walking over to Cadman who is desperately trying to shut them down. "I-I-I'm trying to shut it down, but it's requiring that code." She says and Rodney pushes her aside while saying: "Hey, get out of there." And he takes over from her, trying to shut the system down. "It's the Star Drive." He says, looking at Dr. Weir who doesn't seem to know what a Star Drive is. Rodney starts to explain: "Look, the city, as you know, is just a giant spaceship with a Star Drive capable of faster than light travel. Which means that it also has inertial dampeners."  
"Yes, I know that." Dr. Weir replies.  
Rodney starts pacing through the control room as he continues talking. "One of the precursors of the Star Drive's power-up phase is he activation if the dampeners… ah, which may very well affect our cloaking. Look, but that's not the worst of it." He says.  
"It will overload the ZPM." Dr. Weir says, her voice indicates tha she now fully understand the trouble they are in."  
"Way overload it." Rodney agrees.  
Dr. Weir and Cadman look at each other for a moment and then Dr. Weir asks: "How soon before that happens?"  
Rodney, carrying a completely terrified look, doesn't even have to think about this. "Thirty minutes tops and this city will be vaporised." He says, not exaggerating this time.  
After that, they summon everyone involved to the briefing room and start initiating an evacuation plan. They know there aren't really all that many options in the matter, but there isn't any other choice.  
They decide that the Deadalus is the best option for them all and they pick the planet closest to them because the Deadalus wouldn't have enough life support to travel long distances with that many people aboard.  
Ronon says that the quickest thing to do is to get the code and he once again volunteers to be the one to interrogate Kavanagh. A rather reluctant Dr. Weir agrees to this when Rodney reminds her that he clock is ticking faster than anyone would like.

Somewhere further on in the city, Carson stumbles upon a lot of activity in one of the rooms. About a dozen or so Athosians are preparing a church like room for the Ring Ceremony. He walks inside. "Oh God…" he whispers. He looks around the room, Charin's body lies on a decorated bed, looking peaceful and almost asleep. Teyla is sitting in front of her, putting something on the bed. She looks stunning in her turquoise floor-length dress, but at this point, Carson doesn't even bother complimenting her about that. He walks into the room and grabs her arm. "What are you doing?" he asks her as she looks around.  
"We are about to begin the Ring Ceremony according to Charin's wishes." Teyla explains. Carson should not have asked, he knew that this is what they are doing, but that's not the answer he wishes to get. He pulls her away from the bed to talk more privately. "They're evacuating the city. In a matter of minutes, it could all explode!" he says in an urgent voice.  
"We are aware of that and many of my people are boarding the Deadalus as we speak. I and the others will leave with the final groups aboard the Puddle Jumpers." Teyla explains.  
Carson comes a little closer to Teyla and whispers: "Cutting it a little close, don' ye think?"  
Teyla looks him straight in the eye as she says: "I made a promise to Charin, and I intent to keep it, no matter the cost." After that she walks away. Carson looks at her, sighing heavily and shaking his head a little. He turns around to stand against the wall. If Teyla is staying, then so is he.  
A few minutes later, the ceremony begins.  
Teyla stands in front of the bed as the leader of her people. She looks serene in her dress and Carson can't stop looking at her. Her strength and willpower continues to overwhelm him.  
As she starts singing, he gets goose bumps over his entire body, he has never heard a more clear voice in his life.

_"Beyond the night, a rising sun  
Beyond the night, the battle's won  
The battle is won…"_

Rodney and Cadman keep working on breaking the code, but so far, they don't seem to have any luck. Rodney looks at the monitor, seeing the ZPM levels rising further than they should be allowed to. With fear in his heart he turns back to his laptop.

_"Fear and shame now in the past"_

Dr. Weir can't sit still, she needs to do something, safe the city at all cost, but she is powerless, there's nothing she can do. She stare out the window of her office, looking at everyone who's either busy evacuating or working their asses off in order to safe the day.

_"Pain and sorrow gone at last  
Gone at last."_

"ZedPM overload in ten minutes…" Rodney says in a defeated voice. Dr. Weir had joined Rodney in the control room, the mood could not be more sad and pained. "We should think about getting to the Jumpers." Rodney continues. When Cadman walks into the control room once more, they both look around. She looks like she's in a hurry and there's a look of great importance on her face. "Dr. Weir, Rodney. I found something." She says.

The Ring Ceremony continues and Carson is counting down in his head. Every minute, every second, it all seems to go too fast. In less than ten minutes they will all be gone, everyone left in the city will be killed, including himself, including Rodney who would probably never give up trying to safe the city. He feels the fear building inside his chest and he wishes to run and hide, to escape so that he'll be safe, but the doctors side of him doesn't let him do that, he can't leave without saving all of these people first. Teyla continues to sing and he continues to listen.

_"Circle renewed, peace will be found  
beyond the night on sacred ground."_

Sheppard runs into the interrogation room where Ronon is hovering over Kavanagh, who is lying unconscious on the ground. "Stop!" he shouts, but the he sees the scene and asks: "What did you do to him?"  
Ronon looks up and steps away from Kavanagh. "Nothing. He fainted before I could touch him." He says. Sheppard looks up, desperately trying to hide a grin.

Caldwell sits on his chair in the Deadalus, passengers aboard. He has a rather smug look on his face as he says: "Dr. Weir, we're ready to go. We'll meet you at the rendezvous site."  
The next moment he finds himself sitting in the interrogation room, Sheppard and Dr. Weir standing across him. He looks around in shock and then stands up. "What the hell's going on here?" he asks.  
"I asked Hermiod to beam you here so you can give us the access code." Dr. Weir explains. Caldwell squints his eyes. "What?" he asks, he hears soft footsteps behind his and knows that Ronon is there, waiting for a chance to punch him on the face.  
"Lieutenant Cadman discovered a gap in the system command logs that indicated two deletion points which she…" she gets interrupted by Caldwell. "Look, we don't have time for this." He says angrily but Dr. Weir takes a step forward. "Your identification code was used to identify this city's operating system. You copied it, took it back to the Trust, whose Goa'uld scientists then rewrote the program t overload the ZPM."  
Caldwell listens to all this, not believing his own ears.  
"You then brought it back here and uploaded it into the Atlantis computers." Dr. Weir continues.  
"You think I'm working for the Trust?" Caldwell asks, incredulously.  
This time it's Sheppard who answers the question. "We know you're working for the Trust." He says and he gets out his gun, not yet pointing it in Caldwell's direction. "So give us the code."  
Caldwell takes a moment to stare at both Sheppard and Dr. Weir as his eyes suddenly start to glow. As the realization of the situation washes over them, Sheppard raises his gun and Dr. Weir says: "Oh my God…" Caldwell is the Goa'uld, she hadn't really expected that.  
"I will never give you that code." Caldwell smugly says in the voice of a Goa'uld.  
Sheppard and Dr. Weir look at each other for a moment, a silent understanding passing between them. Now that Caldwell turns out the be a Goa'uld, they'll probably have to kill him. Dr. Weir gives a tiny nod and leaves the room. Sheppard turns back t face Caldwell.  
"I warn you, as a Goa'uld I now posses the strength of many men." The Goa'uld says.  
Ronon, who hadn't moved an inch since they'd found out Caldwell's a Goa'uld, decides it's time to show his own strength. "It won't be a fair fight then…" he says ominously. He walks over to Caldwell, kicking away a chair and grabbing the man and slamming him into the wall behind him, punching the man hard in his face before throwing him over a table and onto the ground.  
"Hold on." Sheppard tells Ronon as he tries to go for a round two. Caldwell tries to get back onto his feet but Sheppard draws out a taser and he starts to electrocute the Goa'uld inside Caldwell. Caldwell screams and convulses under the stress his body is in right now.  
Sheppard stops and calls out for the colonel. "Sheppard…" Caldwell replies in his normal voice. He has control over the body once more, but his mind is still fighting the battle with the injured Goa'uld.  
"We don't have much time. We need that access code." Sheppard says to him. They wait until Caldwell has regained enough conscious to give them the code.

"Oh God…" Rodney whispers while looking at the control panels all around him. "ZedPM levels are spiking, we need to go NOW!" he shouts, standing up from his chair and running towards the end of the control room, fearing that leaving now will be too late. Sheppard and Ronon come running up the stairs, Sheppard's holding out his hand and Rodney is glad to take whatever it is the hand is containing. "Access code." Sheppard huffs out and Rodney runs back to his laptop. He opens a little screen while the main screen keeps warning them that the overload is imminent and he quickly types the code. When the code is accepted, he feels a sudden urge to cry out in bliss he takes a deep breath and looks at Dr. Weir with relief in his eyes. Dr. Weir smiles and looks at Ronon who lets his head drop on one of the Ancient control panels. The ZPM levels go back to normal and the danger has passed.

_"River flows and at dying it wins.  
First new breath, our journey begins  
Our journey begins"_

The Ring Ceremony has finally ended and Carson, who is not yet aware of the fact that the failsafe code has been re-enabled, is about to run out of the room when he bumps into Cadman. "What are ye doing here?" he asks, wondering why there are still people in Atlantis even now.  
"Take it easy, Carson, we've got the code, the city won't explode." Cadman explains.  
Carson drops his back against the wall and breaths a sigh of relief. "Thank God." He says with a shaking voice.  
He leaves the room with Cadman after nodding at Teyla that she can take all the time she needs. "So you got the code?" Carson asks. "Kavanagh finally gave in then?"  
Cadman shakes her head. "It wasn't Kavanagh. It turned out to be colonel Caldwell. He has a Goa'uld inside him." She replies in a voice that expresses concern.  
Carson nods and swallows hard. If the Goa'uld had infiltrated this far, there's no way of telling what else they know about Atlantis. They walk through the hallway and find Dr. Weir searching for someone. When she sees Carson, she walks up to him. "I wonder if I could have a word with you for a second." She asks. Carson nods and asks Cadman to wait there for him. He walks a little way away from her with Dr. Weir and she asks: "I was wondering if you could to a full evaluation on the people of Atlantis. If Caldwell has a Goa'uld inside him, who knows who else can be affected." She says. Carson immediately nods. He had thought of that himself as well. "Wha' is going to happen to the man now?" he wishes to know.  
Dr. Weir stares at the wall for a moment, folding her hands while saying: "Hermiod, the Asgard on the Deadalus is planning to remove the Goa'uld with their beaming technology." She explains. "He wishes you to be there when he does." Again, Carson nods. These Asgards really are quite something. He says goodbye to Dr. Weir and walks back to Cadman who was still waiting for him. They continue to walk down the corridors together and Carson starts looking for a subject to talk about. "So I heard ye had to work with Rodney." He then says in a joking way. Cadman nods and grimaces. "I can't understand how people can stick up with that man. How they are able to work under his command remains a mystery to me." She admits. This makes Carson laugh. "Aye, I completely understand what ye mean, he tends to drive people insane from time to time." He replies, grinning from ear to ear. "Luckily he listens to me whenever he takes things too far and then he looks somewhat like a disobedient child."  
Cadman laughs about this and they round the corner. "Well, whatever…" she starts to say, but then they bump into Rodney who immediately starts talking. "Oh, Carson. Hermiod is just beginning initial calculation on the extraction." He says, pointing back into the hallway.  
Carson and Cadman stop walking and Cadman looks a little confused. "Extraction?" she asks, she hadn't heard what Dr Weir had told Carson in the hallway, so she wouldn't know what this is all about.  
"Now?" Carson asks.  
Rodney walks passed Carson and Cadman, turning around again. "Mmm-hmm. Hermiod's gonna attempt to extract the Goa'uld from colonel Caldwell using Asgard beaming technology." He explains to Cadman.  
Carson looks at Cadman who looks aghast. "Quite remarkable, actually." He says in an impressed voice.  
"And complicated." Rodney adds to that. "The calculations are impossibly intricate. You don't want to go beaming out a chunk of his brain!" he smiles as if making a really interesting joke but Carson and Cadman stare at him with disgust. "Lovely, Rodney…" Carson says sarcastically and Cadman chuckles a little at this, but Rodney doesn't have time to reply to this as he sees a familiar face walking briskly and angrily through the corridors right to the place where they are. "Hey, look who's back!" he says in an amused way. Carson and Cadman look around, barely able to stop themselves from laughing.  
Zelenka walks through the hallway, his face indicating his bad mood, but aside from that, it's painted in various, rather lively colours and his hair has white straws woven into them.  
"It's Mister Mom!" Rodney continues to joke. "How were the kids?"  
Zelenka turns around, furiously pointing a finger in Rodney's direction, struggling to find words that would be fitting for this situation, but finding none. After a little while he manages to say: "Do not even speak to me!" after that he turns around again and stomps off through the hallway.  
Rodney turns to Carson and Cadman again, a smug look on his face and even though Carson feels really sorry for Zelenka, he can't help but laugh at this, Cadman quickly follows and Rodney, who was already grinning, clutches his stomach for support.  
"Anyway, I should be getting back to work." Cadman says once they've regained control over themselves again.  
"Aye, I should be heading towards the infirmary myself." Carson replies. They nod at each other and both go their separate ways. Rodney takes a little sprint to catch up with Carson. "So how are you doing now?" he asks. Carson nods. "Just lovely, Rodney, thanks." He says with a slight smile on his face.  
"You stayed behind?" Rodney wants to know and Carson merely nods. "Why?" Rodney wishes to know.  
Carson looks at him, grinning a little. "If ye were a doctor like me, ye would never leave anyone behind. Not when there's such a danger at hand." He explains, he had expected that Rodney wouldn't understand. "You stayed behind as well. Why?" he asks in return.  
Rodney shrug's his shoulders. "For the obvious reasons. I was needed to safe the city." He says with a proud look on his face.  
Carson smiles and stops walking for a moment, Rodney walks back up to him. "What?" he asks when Carson gives him an affectionate look. Carson shakes his head. "Nothing, it's just tha' I'm glad that we both stayed behind… if the city had gone up in the explosion… at least we'd both be dead right now… If I had left… I couldn't live with myself if you were to die and I survived…" he whispers, staring at the ground.  
Rodney smiles a little, taking the Scottish doctor in his arms and holding him tight. "It's alright now you silly man, we've both alive, we're safe." He whispers and they continue to stand there for a few more minutes before returning to their every day duties.

--

Translation: Idiot. "Say hi' to the kids for me." You'll catch it from me. You are such an idiot.


	9. Grace under Pressure

Some people might not exactly like what I'm about to write in this chapter, but for obvious reasons (to me at least...) I don't really have much of a choice.  
Anyway, here it is, chapter 9: Grace under Pressure.

--

Rodney can't shake the terrifying feeling off of him, he had been in that sinking Jumper for over an hour and he nearly drowned

Rodney can't shake the terrifying feeling off of him, he had been in that sinking Jumper for over an hour and he nearly drowned. The only thing that had kept him alive was Sam, or at least, his hallucination of Sam. Even now, though he is alive and safe, he can see her smiling down at him, as if she's still protecting him. 'It's the concussion,' he tells himself. Nothing more, nothing less. Still he can't help but recalling the happening when he drifts off into sleep.

Carson had been pacing up and down in the infirmary for the last fifteen minutes. He had heard the news about Rodney being found and returning to Atlantis. He had also heard that he's injured and that it's got nothing to do with his natural wining.

When they bring him in his attention is immediately drawn to the big wound on Rodney's head and the fact that he's unconscious. "Oh my God, Rodney!" he shouts, feeling fear in his heart when the men hoist him onto a bed.

"Don't worry doc, he was alive and awake when we found him. He's probably just sleeping right now." Sheppard says in a comforting voice but Carson shakes his head. "Even tha' is dangerous colonel. If Rodney's got a concussion which I have to assume he has, he isn't supposed to be sleeping righ' now." he explains.

Sheppard and Zelenka leave the room as Carson starts tending Rodney.

Carson stands over Rodney's bed, shaking him slightly, but the man doesn't wake up so Carson decides to attach him to a heart monitor. "When ye wake up, love, I'm gonna make sure to give ye one hell of a good night." he promises the man, having the foolish hope that this will make him wake up sooner. He decides to give Rodney a stimulant, thinking that the first thing on his agenda should now be to make the man conscious again, but then he remembers that it's actually a lot more important to stop his head wound from bleeding and he turns to that first.

He carefully cleans the wound, although the water had pretty much taken care of that already, he can't be too careful about this. After that he uses glue to get the wound together, stitches wouldn't do much good on a sensitive area like that, also, he doesn't quite trust his trembling hands to do the trick at this point. Lastly, he puts a bandage over the man's head and he sits down on a chair aside his bed, putting his head in his hands.

Dr. Weir walks in to the infirmary, but he goes unnoticed by Carson who is thinking pretty much like Rodney is thinking all the time: doomsday scenario's.

"Carson?" she asks and Carson looks up. "Elizabeth…" he says in a mild surprise, he hadn't expected anyone here so soon. Dr. Weir nods and she walks up to the doctor, carrying a comforting and worried smile. "How is he doing?" she asks.

Carson takes a deep breath and looks at the heart monitor. "Heart rate's pretty normal, so is his blood pressure, considering the fact that it was always higher than normal… but he won't wake up and that does have me a little worried." he explains, his voice soft and trembling while he tries to stay professional.

Dr. Weir nods, putting a hand on the man's shoulder. "If you need to talk someone, just call me on the radio, alright?" she says, knowing all about the wicked relationship between the two men and although she sometimes gets freaked out about the thought of it, she wishes to be there for the Scottish doctor if he needs to talk to her about what's going on right now.

Carson nods, grateful for the opportunity. "Thank ye, Elizabeth." he says softly. Dr. Weir nods and smiles kindly. "I suppose I should leave now then… let me know when he wakes up alright?" she asks kindly of him and Carson nods back at her.

Once Dr. Weir has left, Carson turns back to look at Rodney once more. He looks pained, as if he's having a terrible nightmare. "It'll be alrigh' love… ye'll be fine." Carson whispers, holding the man's hand and kissing it softly. He feels tears welling up in his eyes, but he wills them away. A doctor shouldn't be crying when a patient needs him the most.

Of course, Rodney is hardly to be called a normal patient in his opinion, but still, he's here, in the infirmary and Carson's the one needing to cure him. That does make him a patient.

He shakes his head, he needs to clear his mind of any weird thoughts at the moment. If things go worse in Rodney's side, he needs to be there for him, he can't risk his condition getting worse.

Rodney starts squirming in his bed and murmurs something about 'taking on water.' Carson grabs his hand again, stroking it softly while whispering soothing words at him.

Rodney continues to squirm beneath him and Carson decides to kiss him on the cheek for a moment, but the words that come from the man's mouth next somewhat shock him. "Sam…" he whispers and he smiles and groans slightly.

Carson backs off, staring at the Canadian with a horrified look on his face. "Sam?" he asks.

"Yeah, he was walking about her as well when we saved him from Jumper 6…" he then hears, he turns around and sees Sheppard, leaning against the doorframe.

"Why?" Carson asks, but Sheppard doesn't reply. "How's he doing?" he asks instead.

Carson turns back to face Rodney, not understanding why he feels a sudden anger inside him, jealousy even. "Pretty bloody good by the looks of it." he says in a harsh voice.

Sheppard sighs and pushes himself away from the doorframe. "Alright, keep me informed in case anything happens." he says, quickly walking away from the infirmary. Carson doesn't anger quickly, but when he does, it's never pretty.

Carson walks into his office to take a cup of coffee. Maybe he's just tired, maybe that's the reason why he's acting so strangely.

When he returns to Rodney's bed, the man is still murmuring things, something about 'believing it if she were naked.' and Carson puts his cup away. The coffee isn't helping him. He takes a deep breath and gives the man a tap on his head, making him squirm uncomfortably and reaching up to his head. "Ouch…" he murmurs. Rodney opens his eyes and squints them as he sees the infirmary lights. "Why did you do that?" he asks when he sees Carson. He doesn't quite like the look in his eyes and he wonders what he had been dreaming about, or rather, what he said during the time he was out.

"Ye wouldn't be talking about Samantha Carter, would ye?" Carson asks, his voice rather low and threatening.

Rodney stares at the blankets, that would explain why he is experiencing a sudden restriction between his legs. "I think I was…" he admits. "But it's nothing like you think."

Carson folds his arms and cocks an eyebrow. "Ye weren't picturing her naked and ye didn' wish to make out with her?" he asks.

Rodney shakes his head and then nods. "I was hallucinating…" he says as an excuse.

"Oh sure, and yer hallucinations include a half naked woman?" Carson says in a hurt way. Rodney tries to push himself up on his pillow, looking straight into Carson's eyes, looking slightly frightened. "Only at some point… I needed to be talked out of a stupid plan so my subconscious mind thought of the only thing Sam could possibly do to stop me." he tries to explain, wishing he could take back the words as Carson's eyes seem to shoot fire at him. "The only thing she could do to stop ye from doing something stupid was stripping naked and making out with ye?" he asks, grinding his teeth.

Rodney decides it's best not to reply. He stares at his blanket and hopes that Carson will calm down soon. Carson, however, is genuinely hurt by this confession. "Why on earth would ye hallucinate about her in the first place? I thought ye and I had something together." he says, his voice softer, but still harsh.

Rodney looks at him, he can clearly imagine why the man talks like this, but for some reason, he doesn't think it's fair. "When we got transported back in time to the tragedy on the planet Hoff, did I become angry because you were crying about Perna again?" he asks, yelling a little, bit he quickly stops as he feels his head pounding because of this.

Carson looks at the man with wide open mouth. "That is something completely different." he says in a monotone voice.

Rodney shakes his head, clutching it in agony when it starts pounding again. "It isn't. Perna was a woman you once had the hots for, Sam is someone I once really liked. She is also a really smart woman and, in my subconscious mind, she was the only one who could help me get out of the Jumper." he says grinding his teeth.

"Perna died!" Carson shouts. "Sam is still alive, how on earth should I know that ye'r not still in love with her?"

Rodney looks up at him in anger. "As my boyfriend you'll just have to trust me on that!" he shouts back at him.

Carson turns his back on him and whispers: "Tha's the problem. I'm not sure if I can do tha'" after that he walks out of the infirmary. Rodney tries to walk after him but he becomes dizzy and his legs fail him, letting him collapse onto the floor. Some nurses hoist him back onto the bed and forbid him to move.

He lies there, cursing himself for being like this and hating himself for hurting Carson like this.

Carson walks briskly up to his room, closing the door behind him and falling down on his bed. Samantha Carter… a nail on his coffin, he had always known that Rodney had liked her, it had never been a secret… but why is he hallucinating about her in such a way? It pains him immensely and he doesn't wish to speak to Rodney anymore right now. He doesn't know if he can ever trust him again now that he knows he still fantasizes about women this way, now that he knows that Sam is still in his mind like that.

He buries his head in his pillow and cries softly.

Rodney lies flat on his back in the infirmary, his head hurting from the wound as well as from thinking too much. For the last couple of hours he had been thinking about the best way to make it up to Carson. He hates it when Carson is angry with him, he feels really lonely whenever the man leaves him like this. A feeling he never wished to feel again.

He doesn't even notice it when a nurse walks up to him to check up on his vitals. When she starts talking to him, he nearly jumps up in surprise, his heart racing slightly. "I think it's safe to release you from the infirmary now." she says.

Rodney nods and smiles a little. "Thanks." he says, ripping the wires attached to him away and getting out of bed. His head is still pounding and he feels dizzy, but he's not about to let the nurse know this. For all he knows she might just refuse him from leaving anyway and he can't have that right now.

He tries to walk in a steady line until he's out of the infirmary, then he grasps the wall for support and tries to get his bearings right. Carson would most probably be in his room right now, he thinks, so that would be the best place to start.

He takes a deep breath and concentrates on the path in front of him. All that is on his mind is to talk to Carson.

When he stands in front of the man's door, his resolve falters a bit. What if he's still angry? What if he doesn't wish to talk to him? He shakes his head again. That's not something he should think about. He needs to try and make it up to him, tell him how sorry he is even though he couldn't help thinking about Sam in the first place.

His hand moves over the control crystals that function as a doorbell but everything stays quiet on the other side of the door so he moves his hand over the crystals again. he hears someone stumbling on the other side and he stands up straight. A moment later, the door opens. The sight he receives breaks his heart: Carson had been crying, the red stripes still on his cheeks where his tears had crossed them. "Carson…" he whispers, wanting to wipe away any traces of tears from the man's face, but Carson doesn't allow it. He jerks his head away and stares at the wall of his quarters. "Wha' are ye doing here, Rodney? I don' wish to see you righ' now." he says and Rodney fears the sound of his voice, it sounds empty, sad and lonely.

"I'm so sorry, Carson…" he whispers, feeling just as sad as the other man looks. "If I could turn things back I would do it… but I can't… it's happened…"

Carson still doesn't look at him. "Aye… and that's what hurts me most… love… Rodney…" he says, starting to cry again. Those words make Rodney icy cold inside, Carson had corrected himself, he didn't want to call him 'love' anymore, he's just Rodney now. "Carson… I don't want to lose you over something like this." he says in a clear voice, once again reaching out for the man's face, but Carson still doesn't allow it. He finally looks up, the look in Rodney's eyes nearly makes him stop saying what he's about to say, but he stays with the resolve. "I'm sorry Rodney…" he whispers, his voice shaking. "But I can't do this anymore… not while ye'r still not sure about yer feelings for others."

Rodney's breath stocks in his throat and he swallows hard, the world starts turning in front of his eyes and he feels this enormous fear building up inside him. "Don't say that." he pleads. "Please don't tell me this…"

Carson closes his eyes for a second before staring at the ceiling. "I am telling ye this, Rodney. I think we should stop seeing each other… at least until ye know for sure tha' ye love me." he says in an absolute voice. "And that ye love only me… I can't have it any other way."

Rodney starts crying as well now, big tears roll over the man's face and he staggers as he feels how this affects his dizziness. Carson sees this happening and is almost tempted to reach out for him and hold him steady, instead he says: "Go to yer quarters, Rodney, get some rest." Then he turns around and closes the door again, sagging against the door and crying his heart out.

Rodney is about to walk over to his quarters when he decides it's best to get something to eat first. For a change he doesn't really feel all that hungry, but going to bed without eating first wouldn't do him much good either. He walks up to the mess hall, still thinking about Carson's words. He walks on like a zombie.

Alone… he's alone again. Back in that hell where he was in before he found Carson. Again without someone to love him.

He sighs as he walks through the open doors of the mess hall and grabs the first edible things he can find. He is startled out of his thoughts when he hears someone calling out his name. He looks up and sees Sheppard waving over at him. Teyla and Ronon are also there, smiling kindly up at him. Friends… he thinks, he still has them.

It's not the same.

He sighs and walks up to them. "Hey guys." he says and he hopes with all his heart that he doesn't sound too sad. They don't have to find out about the break up just yet.

The group watches him as he sits down, frowning a little. "Are you sure you should be released from the infirmary just yet? You don't look so well." Sheppard notices.

Rodney looks up at him and is quick to put up a smile. "I feel fine, don't worry about me." he says, waving the man's worries away.

Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon now look at him with even more doubt in their eyes. "Now that does make me worry a little." Ronon says to Sheppard. "I agree." Teyla replies.

Sheppard bows towards Rodney, scrutinizing him. "Are you the real Rodney McKay?" he asks in a joking way. Rodney frowns his eyebrows, wondering why they are asking this. "Now why would you say something like that?" he asks in slight annoyance.

Sheppard sits back, folding his arms while he's grinning. "Now that sounds a little more like the McKay I know. You usually whine about minor things like splinters and paper cuts but this time, you had a real injury and you tell us not to worry while this would be the perfect opportunity to brag about it." he explains.

Rodney puts up an acted grin. "Yeah, you might be right about that." he says.

"Hey look who's there." Ronon then suddenly says and everyone looks around. Rodney feels his heart plummeting as he watches Carson walking into the mess hall. He looks the way Rodney feels and to make it worse, Sheppard calls out to him. When Carson looks up, Rodney can tell his reluctance to reply. "Come on, doc, share a meal with us!" Sheppard shouts through the mess hall, making everyone look up and stare at him. Rodney feels bad for the man, this way, he can't walk away. After thinking a little while, Carson nods and he slowly walks up to the table. "Good evening." he says silently and he sits down on the only free chair, inconveniently located just beside Rodney.

The conversation at the table falls silent as they notice the obvious tension between the two men. Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon exchange looks with each other, wondering what's wrong.

Sheppard clears his throat and decides he should be the one to ask the obvious question. "So what's new on your side?" he asks, not really the best way to put it, he knows and seeing the pain in the men's eyes, he wishes he could take the question back.

Teyla tries to come to the rescue. "What John tries to ask is… you seem to be a little uncomfortable, is something the matter?" she asks, slightly better formulated, but it doesn't change the fact that the men seem to be near tears.

"Excuse me." Carson says, he stands up and walks out of the mess hall, leaving his plate on the table, still untouched. Rodney looks after him, frowning sadly. He feels the eyes of the other three burning him, wanting an answer. He sighs and looks at them for a second, they look slightly worried. "We broke up, OK?" Rodney says, a little more forceful than he intended.

"What?!" Teyla huffs out, totally startled. "But why? You two seemed to be doing so well."

The others seem to agree on that and Rodney quickly explains in a less detailed way what had happened in the Jumper and what happened when he got back. When he has finished the story, he looks at them again, seeing astonished looks on their faces.

"I can understand why you would think about her in such a situation… she is one of the smartest persons I know." Sheppard says, staring at the table.

Teyla however, seems to understand Carson's feelings as well. "Yet thinking of her in such a way as you did… I can understand why Dr. Beckett does not think too lightly about this." she says, Ronon and Sheppard look at her and she smiles in an apologising way.

"Who is this Samantha Carter anyway?" Ronon then asks.

Sheppard looks at him. "She's a colonel back on earth. She's damned hot by the way." he adds to that and Ronon starts to grin

This isn't helping Rodney at all, he feels on the verge of crying and he stands up. "I'm going to get some sleep." he says silently, he clears up his plate and Carson's before walking up to his quarters.

"I honestly had never expected this to happen." Teyla admits and the others nod.

The night falls and after midnight, the two men are still awake in their separate quarters.

They can't seem to stop thinking about what has happened and they silently wish it never had happened, each for their separate reasons.

It feels so damned lonely.


	10. Michael

_I am sorry for not updating earlier. As I am following the main story line, as most of you have noticed, I found it extremely difficult to continue writing after their break up, especially while I know what's coming up ahead (not saying anything, don't want to send off a spoiler alert)._

_So, I am attempting to write another chapter now, because I know people have been asking for it. I just hope I can get some level of interesting writing going, I really wish for this story to be at least relatively good (as good as it can be seeing as my grammar sorta sucks sometimes)_

_So, please, as always give me a review, I hope I can get some constructive comments out of this that will help me through the story and that might possibly even improve on my writing._

_Thanks in advance and I hope you enjoy reading!_

_Warnings: Standard slash warnings might not apply in this, although there still might be some... boy on boy talk ;) we're still talking about the McBeck ship here :D_

_So be warned, don't like, don't read._

_Now, on with the story._

**Michael**

A month had passed since Rodney and Carson broke up, a full month already and although the two of them went on several missions together, the situation was still awkward between them.  
Rodney sits in his room, laptop at his side, as always, but he can't bother to work. He's been having trouble concentrating these last few days, since he is still trying to figure out a way to make it up to Carson. Today, however, he found out that this might no longer be possible. Carson had planned a date with Laura Cadman. Out of all people, it had to be Cadman.  
He sighs and gets out of his chair, moving to the bed instead. With a defeated groan he falls down on it, face first, stomping his pillow with his fist. 'I suppose it could have been worse' Rodney thinks. Having spent some time with Cadman locked inside his head he can tell pretty much all there is to tell about her and yes, she is a nice woman, he might even consider trying to be friends with her, if it wasn't for the fact that she was now trying to take away the one person he loves. 'And succeeding...' he thinks with pain in his heart.  
The fact that it only took Carson one month to get over Rodney feel that he might not have been more than a fling.  
In these last couple of weeks he had been constantly thinking about where he went wrong and how he could have prevented it, as well as how he could repair the damage, so to speak.  
When he finally found the courage to speak to Carson in private, while not on a mission, it had been too late.  
In his head he can see how he had walked up to the infirmary, he had asked the Athosians to make him some of Carson's favourite candy treats for the occasion and he had worked out a nice and appropriate apology, or at least, he thinks he did. He never got the chance to test it.  
When he approached the infirmary, he heard Carson laugh, it made him stop dead in his tracks. A second, female voice, alarmed him, she laughed as well. It was Cadman.  
"Of course, I would like to have dinner with you, Laura." he heard Carson say. His heart stopped beating for a second, it felt constricted in his chest and he gasped for air. A sudden wetness on his cheeks made him notice that he was crying and with a strangled moan he threw the box of candy into the wall as he ran away.  
Now, one week later, he still can't believe his timing. If he had been a few days earlier, a few hours even, that might have done the trick. If only he hadn't been so terrified of facing his former lover, nothing like this would have happened.  
He sighs and rolls over on his back, rubbing his face with his hands. He should really get back to work. Since Carson currently has his hands full with his newest experiment, he doesn't really have to worry about running into him any time soon.  
'Michael...' he thinks, 'a wraith that's being transformed into a human.' the ingenuity of the doctor never ceases to amaze him. Not that he would ever say that out loud of course, since to him, the study of medicine is nothing more than voodoo, but he can't help but feel a certain respect for the man. He has come this far, it's astounding. Of course that might be because of the feelings that linger inside him whenever he thinks of the man.  
He stands up, takes his laptop and walks out of his room, towards the science lab where he and his team will be working on figuring out how a wraith re-materializer works.

Carson sits in his office, head covered in his hands. He hadn't been sleeping for days, since they brought in the wraith they now call Michael. The past week had been stressful, tiring and frightening as he saw the effects of the drug on a wraith. He feels pride when he thinks of how far he has come. He had found a way to completely get rid of the wraith DNA and leave only the human parts behind. Of course, Michael would still need a regular dosage of the drug, but that would be easy enough, he just hopes he can adjust to live on Atlantis.  
He sighs for a moment and sits up straight, grabbing his coffee mug and taking a sip. He stares at the calender. July already, the time flies. His eyes hover over one of the dates and linger there for a moment. 'Dinner Lt. Cadman' it says. He clenches his teeth. About a week ago, he had made the date with her, on the exact moment that Rodney had wanted to make up with him. He had heard someone walking up to the infirmary, but he hadn't thought much about it, people walk in there all the time. When the footsteps stopped, he should have suspected something, but he didn't, who would have ever thought that Rodney would choose that moment, of all times, to talk to him.  
"Of course, I would like to have dinner with you, Laura," he had said. The sentence was followed by a loud thud on the wall outside the infirmary and the sound on footsteps running away from them. With a growing fear in his heart, he walked outside, finding a box of candy on the ground and a note that said only one word: Yours.  
He knew that this could only mean one thing. Rodney had been here, he wanted to talk, he had made up his mind and he had chosen him. If he could have, he would have kicked himself in the rear for making this date with Cadman, for doing this now, after only a month. But how long was he supposed to wait? Would it have been better to wait an eternity for a man who might or might not come up to him and confess eternal loyalty or something like that? After seeing Rodney flinch and run off every time they did not have to be together, he didn't think there would be much of a chance left for them, so he decided it would be best to go on with his life.  
And now he is left with a great sense of guilt in his heart.  
He had not spoken to Rodney, he didn't dare to. Afraid of his reaction to all of this.  
He shakes his head. Best not to think of this at the moment, there are more pressing matters to attend to. He stands up and stretches his tired muscles, rubbing his eyes for a moment as he walks out of his office and into the infirmary itself.

Two more days pass and Michael had woken up in the mean time. Fully human, but with no memory what so ever. The retrovirus had worked, he is no longer wraith.  
Carson is nearly gloating over the fact that it worked so well, he had never expected this in his wildest dreams. However, the fear of him reverting, or remembering stuff about his life as a wraith makes sure that he can not enjoy this victory to it's fullest.  
At least he has had a chance to catch up on some well deserved sleep, although the image of Rodney Mckay didn't really seem to agree with him getting sleep. He kept dreaming about him trying to kill Cadman, getting killed himself in the process because, lets face it, Cadman is quite a bit stronger than Rodney. At some point the dream Rodney seemingly didn't agree with getting killed any more, because in his last dream, Rodney turned into a wraith and killed everyone on the Atlantis base. Of course, this could also have some reference to his fear of Michael reverting back into a wraith, he doesn't know.  
His thoughts come to an abrupt end when a message from Doctor Weir sounds clearly through his headset: "All senior personnel please report to my office."  
With a silent sigh Carson turns around and heads away from his previous destination, namely the mess hall and towards Doctor Weir's office.  
When he gets there, everyone else is already there.  
"Carson, glad you could join us." Doctor Weir says, motioning him to sit down. Carson nods and decides to take the seat closest to Ronon in case Rodney makes an attempt on his life. He chuckles softly for a moment at the thought of it. Rodney, however, decides the best place for him to be is at the other side of the room, behind Doctor Weir, thus keeping a safe distance between them. Carson glances over to Rodney, just to see him, but quickly looks away when he notices the pained look in the Canadian's eyes.  
"So, what's the emergency?" he decides to ask. For some reason he already knows it has something to do with Michael, seeing as that's pretty much the only problem they can have on the base.  
"Teyla has just informed me that Michael has been having dreams about the wraith." Doctor Weir explains. Carson nods, his heart plummeting, he had been afraid something like this might happen.  
Doctor Weir faces away from him, towards a computer screen that monitors Michael's movements.  
Her next question is meant for Teyla: "He's only had the one dream?" She turns around to face her as she answers.  
"Yes," Teyla says, "He believes the wraith did something to him during his capture."  
Doctor Weir looks sympathetic at this and looks at Carson. "Can you do something to help him?" she asks. Carson looks away for a moment, thinking, then frowning a bit. "Perhaps I can give him a sedative to help him sleep," he says, knowing that's probably not the answer they were looking for, and indeed, Doctor Weir looks away, ready to tell him that's not the case, so he quickly continues: "Or I could increase his dosage, although I do caution against tha' at this time." He makes a point to stress that last sentence. The unexpected thing about the reply is not the spoken words, but the person they came from. A very annoyed Rodney, who is looking sarcastically in his direction with his arms behind his back says: "Why, if it's working, what's wrong with giving him more?"  
His eyes turn back to the slightly pained expression they had before, even though he tries to conceal it. Carson's own heart jumps when he hears his voice and he takes a deep breath before saying: "Because, Rodney, I specifically calibrated his regiment according to his current physical condition." his lips feel weird forming his name again, he had tried not to say it too much over the last couple of days, with another deep breath he says: "Any alteration could reverse the effects of his recovery." Rodney understood where he was going with this somewhere halfway through the story and looked at the ceiling, apparently not willing to look at Carson any more. When Carson starts speaking again, however, he is forced to look back at him. "I say we remain patient. Wait to see if he has any more dreams. If it's merely psychological, then Doctor Heightmeyer should be able to help 'im through it."  
It stays silent in the room for a moment, as everyone else thinks about this. The next time someone speaks, it's Teyla, who clearly has had enough of the whole situation. "Why do we not just tell him the truth?" she asks. Everyone else in the room shakes his or her head as if it's the worst idea possible, so Teyla continues: "I'm finding it difficult, keeping this from him. And I'm beginning to wonder if our course of action is the correct one." She looks straight at Doctor Weir with this sentence, knowing she would probably get the most sensible response from her. Doctor Weir, however is unsure how to respond to this and decides that it would be better if, for the time being, he is kept in the dark about the whole 'you are a wraith' story of his life.  
Teyla does not seem to be happy about it, but she is wise enough not to pressure the topic any further. After she tells Carson to keep a close eye on Michael, she breaks up the meeting.  
At the moment she has said that, Rodney leaves the room, in quite a hurry it seems. Carson sighs at this, he should have known he wouldn't stick around. He can feel the eyes of the others burning in his neck and he decides to leave as well, not daring to look around, he stares at the ground as he leaves Doctor Weir's office.

As soon as Rodney has left the office and is out of sight of the rest of the team, he starts running, he needs fresh air. He runs out onto the first balcony he can find and kicks the railing, grabbing his foot as he notices that the railing is harder than his toes. "Damned Ancients, can't even build a decent stress reliever." he murmurs. He sags down against the wall and feels the same, pain compression on his chest as he did before. He lets out a strangled scream of pain.  
Why does Carson seem so normal under the entire situation? Carson hadn't seen him in a week, quite surely he would know the candy came from him right? Who else would have done something like that? Doesn't he feel anything? Doesn't this situation hurt him as well? Of course, seeing as he is happily planning his next date already, that might give him a possible answer to his own questions, but come on! They had shared a long and twisted tango together, dancing around each other with feelings they could never express, when they finally did, they had shared a few glorious months together, at least, in Rodney's mind they had. That can't be forgotten that easily, can it?  
Rodney bumps his head into the wall behind him, thinking back to the meeting. 'No, he didn't forget.' Rodney thinks, 'When he first entered the room, he looked completely lost, like he didn't know what to do with me, and when his eyes crossed mine, I could've sworn I saw some guilt in them. He didn't forget.'

After this last meeting between the two men, there was suddenly so much going on that the two didn't have time to think of one another.  
Michael's dreams didn't stop, in fact, they became more vivid and at some point, when Carson had dozed off for a moment, Michael got his hands on Carson's research material, his DVD's that had recorded Michael's entire transformation. Michael had gotten so angry that he attacked men on the base trying to escape, he got captured and sent to an alpha site, where he was to resume his treatment against his will.  
Carson went with him, Rodney stayed behind. The only moment where he could even think of Carson, was when he was ready to step through the gate and Cadman was there to see him off. He could clearly picture himself in that situation, giving him a hug and wishing him good luck, promising him a 'special treatment' when he returned. He shivered at the thought that Cadman could be promising him the same thing at that precise moment. But then he remembered that they had yet to resume their status as a dating couple and they probably wouldn't skip a step. At least, not Carson, he wouldn't do that.  
After that, it was work as normal for a day, Rodney resumed his work on the wraith re-materializer schematics and had made some progress already.  
Just when his mind became a bit more clear and he could concentrate fully on his work, the gate dialled in, telling him that Michael had escaped and had taken Teyla hostage. Immediately his heart started racing and his mind was not with Teyla, where it should be, but with Carson. He couldn't stop himself, even though he hated himself for his thoughts.  
He stood up from his desk and wandered around aimlessly through the hallways.  
"Rodney." he suddenly hears and he turns around, looking straight into the eyes of a worrying Laura Cadman. "Oh eh... hi..." he says, trying to put a smile on his face, but it turned out as a grimace.  
Cadman merely nods. "You heard the news, I asssume?" she asks.  
"Yes... yes yes yes I did..." Rodney says nervously, feeling very uncomfortable with the entire situation. Cadman grabs his arm and stops him from walking. Rodney has no choice but to look at her. She looks scared, a bit sad and a lot uncomfortable as well. "I know I probably shouldn't be asking you, or even be talking to you, I know how awkward it is but..." she takes a shaky breath and looks away for a moment before asking: "Do you think Carson is ok? I mean not just physically, but... his experiment, it went wrong... and I feel I should do something for him when he returns, I just don't know what." she turns a bright shade of red as she says this and it seems there are actual tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be asking you this..." Cadman says, attempting to walk away. This time it's Rodney who grabs her arm. "If you can be there for Carson when he gets back, if you can comfort him while I can't then please, do so, because I'm pretty sure he will be a mess. He doesn't like failure, he hates it when something goes wrong and if someone gets hurt, or even dies when he's in command, he will not take it lightly. So please..." he feels his entire body shaking as he talks, his plea is well meant and he hopes that Cadman is up for the task of comforting the great Scottish doctor. If the past is any indication, Carson will try to punish himself endlessly for the mistakes he made, not listening to what others might have to say about it.  
Cadman looks at him with great surprise. "I..." she says, then she nods. "I will... thank you, Rodney. I hope I can comfort him in some way."  
The two of them spent the rest of the time talking about the ways Carson might react to this situation, from best case scenario's to the apocalyptic scenario's that would probably never occur.  
When Carson finally returns, with Teyla, safely to Atlantis, Cadman is there to greet him, Rodney looks at them from a distance as she puts a comforting arm around the doctor.  
He clenches his teeth together, but he can't help a single, soft sob escaping from between them. Doctor Weir puts a hand on his shoulder and pinches him. Rodney looks into her understanding eyes and a few seconds later, he feels tears running down his cheeks again. "Excuse me." he says softly and he rushes out of the control room.

Even though the mission briefing didn't take too long, it felt like it took forever.  
Carson wishes for nothing more than to go back to his room. He needs to be alone right now.  
Cadman had not left his side ever since he got back and it was not until after he had assured her that he would be fine and would not attempt to harm himself, or anyone else for that matter, that she agreed to leave him alone. At that time it was already time for the briefing.  
During the entire ordeal he could feel Rodney's eyes on him, checking to see how he was doing. At one point he dared to look up at him and tried to give him a reassuring smile, which actually just made him look even more concerned.  
Then finally, the meeting was over. Carson rushed back to his quarters and closed the door behind him. He was finally alone.  
He started pacing through the room. Not sure where to direct his thoughts as there was so much wrong with them. Sure, the others had said to him that he was not to blame, of course, they all did, but there's no escaping the fact that he put them in this situation. Atlantis was no longer safe, a wraith that had turned into a human had now reverted back into a wraith and a man had died because of him.  
Sudden fear strikes him, although he doesn't know why and he grabs his hair. He doesn't want to be alone any more, he needs to talk to someone. But who? Who would listen to him? Sure, Laura would, but he would have no idea what to say to her, she would just try to tell him that everything is going to be just fine and he wouldn't believe her. For just a second, Rodney flashes through his mind. Of course, he wouldn't be able to go there...  
The doorbell wakes him from his thoughts and he stares at the door, unable to open it. The doorbell rings again. Carson takes a step backwards, wondering who it would be.  
"Damn it, Carson, open up or I'll break the door down!"  
Carson's breathing becomes rapid as he recognizes the voice from the other side of the door. "Rodney...?" he whispers, knowing that the Canadian can't possibly hear him like this.  
"I'm giving you ten seconds, Carson!" he threatens.  
Within a second, Carson is at the door, he opens it without a second thought, standing face to face with his former lover and never had he been happier to seen him.  
"Rod..." Carson doesn't get a chance to finish Rodney's name, because the next moment, he finds himself in the scientist's arms.  
"I'm so glad to see you're not hurt." Rodney says from the bottom of his heart. This is possibly the first time he has been this honest in his entire life. Carson can feel his body shaking and the hug is a little tighter than he is comfortable with. "Rodney, oxygen..." he huffs out. Rodney reluctantly lets go of him. "Oh, right, sorry." he says, an ashamed grin across his face. He pulls Carson towards the bed and pushes him in a sitting position. "You already know what I'm going to say, the same conversation we always have when one of us makes a screw up..." he says.  
Carson can't help but chuckle at this. "Oh yes, the standard 'yes, we screwed up, so what, we can only work on fixing it' speech. I have to admit it works better than the crap Cadman gave me."  
Rodney winces a little after hearing her name and Carson immediately wishes he had never said anything about it. Then suddenly Rodney's face clears up and he says: "You shouldn't blame her too much for it. She's quite new to the whole comforting thing, especially with you, you're a difficult person to calm. I was only halfway through telling her all possible ways to approach you when you dialled back in."  
Carson watches him with open mouth. "Ye mean te say ye talked to her? And ye both survived?" he asks, clearly surprised by this.  
Rodney nods. "Yes, we did, and yes, we're both still alive." he sighs and takes Carson's head into his hands, forcing the Scot to look at him. "Listen, Carson..." he starts, his voice shaking a little. "I know what I did wrong, I understand that now. I also know I waited too long and yes, I see you had to move on. Knowing me I would have doubted me as well, I'm not exactly the poster boy for loyalty and respect..." Carson tries to deny that, but Rodney places a finger on his lips.  
"Please, don't try to say that this is not true or what not, because I know it is. Truth is, out of all the women you could have chosen here on Atlantis, I know that Cadman at least has genuine feelings for you, she loves you and cares for you and if she can make you happy, then please, I wish you all the luck in the world. This relationship of ours was messed up to begin with anyway." Once again, Rodney can feel himself crying, the knot in his chest in hurting him endlessly and he has a lot of trouble breathing, he blinks the tears away, this might be the last time he is in close proximity to the Scot and he does not want to waste it with a blurry vision. The sight he receives breaks his heart even further. Carson is crying as well as he tries to shake his head. "We had a nice run together, you an' me." he says, choking up. Rodney nods. "Yes, very nice." he admits and before he can say another word, Carson breaks free from Rodney's hands and kisses him like it's the last thing he'll ever do. All his pain, all his love for Rodney is pushed into this one, final kiss and when they break apart, they see understanding in each other's eyes, they know it has ended. They know that their future is not together.  
Rodney takes hold of Carson's hands for one last time and with a watery smile, he turns away, walking out of the room. "I love you..." he whispers softly.  
Carson sobs. "Goodbye, love." he whispers back.

_Writer's note._

_God, that was too hard. I know it was very very mushy and some readers might not agree with it, or like the way I wrote it, but I know I cried writing it..._

_Please do not think that this is the last chapter. I assure you there's more to come. As I said, I have a storyline to follow._

I hope you don't hate me too much for this and I hope you will continue reading to see what will happen to our very unhappy 'couple'.

Thanks for reading and I hope to get a review.


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